Trickle-Down Technology: Full Text Access to Journals in the Hispanic American Periodicals Index

The Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI), produced and published by the Latin American Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, is an example of a relatively small, multilingual, specialized bibliographic database developed in the early 1970s that has managed to stay abreast of technological innovations in the field of information science to the extent that it now offers links to full text articles for many of its citations. HAPI indexes the contents of nearly 550 scholarly journals, published throughout the world and of interest to Latin Americanists. Subject coverage includes all areas of the social sciences and the humanities. Although HAPI operates on a small budget and with a minimal staff, it was initially developed in computerized format and has always been a leader among non-commercial databases in providing technologically current forms of access, via Telnet in 1992 and on CD-ROM the next year. Its Web site opened in 1997. Links to full text articles were released to subscribers in December 2003. This article chronicles HAPI's history, describes its contents, and offers a detailed picture of its full text linking service as well as plans for future developments.