Library cooperation on regional and statewide levels has helped to expand significantly the collections of individual research libraries through cooperative purchasing policies, cataloging networks, union lists, interlibrary loan services and other means. However, access to the contents of these materials is also essential if this vast body of information is to be utilized fully. Books on specific topics can be found with relative ease by searching library subject catalogs, printed bibliographies, and specialized data bases. On the other hand, the wealth of information that appears regularly in periodical literature is all but lost unless it is adequately indexed.

Increasingly, historians of and in the Latin American countries are turning to quantitative data and analysis. TePaske (1972, 1975), Smith (1973), and McGreevey (1972, 1974) comment on work that has been and is being done and on problems inherent in quantification. The problems that students face as quantifiers of the past may be summarized under the rubrics: (1) sources, (2) methodology, (3) training, and (4) financing. It is with the first of these that this article is concerned, especially with sources for quantifying the nineteenth century after independence, a period neglected almost as much as the seventeenth century used to be, at least insofar as the smaller countries are concerned, except for their politics and personages.

Economic development in Latin America has been explained largely in terms of the Economic Commission for Latin America school (ECLA) dominated by Raúl Prebisch. According to this school, “outward orientation” of the periphery, was the key characteristic of Latin America before 1930. The growth pattern was determined by the fortunes of the export sector (including the terms of trade) and its linkages with the developed Center. Since 1930, the massive import substitution policies undertaken by the periphery has led to a new phase of “inward orientation” where the strategic role of promoting growth has been played by the linkage-rich industry. Both growth and inflation have been explained in terms of the institutionalist “structuralist” school which has emphasized bottlenecks related to the land tenure system, market imperfections and deficiencies (both domestic and external), and to a lesser degree to the savings patterns of people (where the demonstration effect, income distribution and the taxation system play pivotal roles).

Desde la creación de la carrera de sociología en 1956, los sociológos—y especialistas afines—han mostrado una particular preferencia por hacer el balance de su propia obra. Siguiendo esa tradición, el Instituto de Sociología de la Universidad de Belgrano se propuso analizar todos los trabajos publicados por los miembros de cuatro de los principales centros de investigación en ciencias sociales de la Argentina: el Instituto de Sociología de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, el Centro de Investigaciones Sociales del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, el Departamento de Sociología de la Fundación Bariloche y el Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias Sociales (CICSO). El equipo, bajo la dirección de Ruth Sautu, esta compuesta por Silvia Blitzer, Emma Galtieri, Ana M. García y Laura Villarruel.