With the growth of computer technology, bibliographic data bases have developed into sophisticated online research tools. The major data bases are produced by abstracting and indexing (A&I) publishers. Vendors purchase the A&I publishers' machine readable tapes, then sell computer access to the tapes to information based organizations such as libraries, which in turn sell access to individual users. However, bibliographic data bases cannot necessarily provide better access to Hispanic materials than traditional catalogs and indexes, since so much literature by and about Hispanics is produced outside the established publishing industry and is not controlled by indexing and other standards. The use of Selective Dissemination of Information services may improve access to Hispanic studies. The Hispanic Consortium may also decide to undertake direct searching of commercially available data bases. For the Hispanic researcher, careful vocabulary control and selection of an appropriate data base are essential. To determine which data bases generally contain relevant information and which index terms are most commonly used, 35 data bases were searched, employing terms often used to describe Hispanic population in the United States. A lengthy appendix contains a subject description of each data base in the study. (SB)