Hmong Questions and Answers

http://www.hmongnet.org

This page contains suggestions for where you might find answers to questions about Hmong People, History, and Culture.


Traditional Research Strategies

HmongNet contributor and academic librarian Christina Smith writes:

Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 17:02:02 -0500 (EST) From: "J. Christina Smith"
I put together a generic library research guide on doing research on the Hmong. Where there is access to periodical indexes, such as the public versions of ERIC (education) and Medline (Medicine), or databases such as Uncover (tables of contents of 18,000 journals), I have included them, as well as links to library catalogs and where to buy the various UMinn RSC bibliographies (I get no royalties!). Otherwise, I have left out links to Hmong web sites (you have a thorough list and the purpose of my site was library research and library-web sources. I included, for example, the link to the Britannica, as it is now available to anyone willing to put up wth the advertising. Ditto the Information Please website. If there are statistics or other authrotiative sites or volumes I should include, I would like to know.

Take a look at:

http://people.bu.edu/jchris/hmong.html

Christina Smith
jchris@bu.edu

Christina Smith also writes:

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 20:50:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: "J. Christina Smith"

This week there were a number of messages from students doing research papers on the Hmong and turning first to the Web and second to this listserv for answers. There have been similar questions on this listserv in the past.

I am writing primarily as an academic librarian and secondarily as the compiler of two annotated bibliographies on the Hmong (published by the University of Minnesota's Refugee Studies Center with no financial gain to myself). My concern -- and I see this at my institution -- is that students are turning to the Web, an uncataloged realm of materials for which there is little quality control - before exploiting the vast resources of their university and college libraries. Some of these resources are on the Web, but the difference is that the information is scholarly material neatly indexed and abstracted, and, student tuition is being used to purchase these materials on the Web, or on CD-ROM.

These include:

Dissertation Abstracts:
an index to dissertations going back to the nineteenth century. A search on Hmong or Miao pulls up 153 dissertations or masters theses.

Worldcat:
A database of approximately 40 million holdings of libraries. A search on Hmong, limiting to English pulls up 1357 records.

There are numerous other catalogs (your university or college library catalog and/or the consortium of libraries it may belong to), and indexes to the fields of sociology, education, anthropology, psychology, law, social science, art, music, medicine, religion, etc. I have searched these and more looking for articles on the Hmong for my two bibliographies.

Many of the topics students or other researchers have mentioned on this listserv have been the subject of books, book chapters, articles in scholarly journals, articles in popular magazines or newspapers, theses and dissertations. Because of copyright restrictions, these are not freely available on the Web. You will only find them by looking into catalogs, indexes, and abstracts at a library, or by consulting bibliographies on the subject. Some of the catalogs, indexes and abstracts may be available on your library's web page, or may be on stand-alone terminals in the library on CD-ROM, or may be available in print only.

One way to start your research is to ask the reference librarians at your library for help.

Christina Smith
Anthropology/Sociology Bibliographer
Mugar Memorial Library
Boston University


Hmong FAQ

In the many years the WWW Hmong Homepage has been in existance, I have accumulated many questions and answers about Hmong people, culture, and history. Unfortunately this information is not organized at all. If you would be willing to go through an archive of questions and answers and to generate a FAQ, please let me know.

Our first attempt at a Hmong FAQ is available, but it still needs a great deal of work.


The HmongNet Mailing List

The HmongNet Mailing List is intended for postings of Hmong-related information (announcements, job openings, requests for information, etc.). It is not a discussion list. The volume of postings to the list is quite low, perhaps two messages a week.

If you have a question or would like to post an announcement of some kind, please email your message to hmongnet@stolaf.edu.

If you would like to subscribe (and even better, help out with answering a variety of Hmong-related questions), please let me know, and I will add you to the HmongNet mailing list. You can email me at: cdr@stolaf.edu.