The Index provides comprehensive access to 18 Chicano periodicals which were retrospectively indexed through October 1978. All material within the periodicals was indexed except photographs and advertisements. Periodicals were selected from academic journals, general consumption magazines, and humanities journals. The Index consists of three main sections: Thesaurus, Subject Index, and Author/Title Index. Arranged in a structured format, the Thesaurus lists terms and relationships among them. The Thesaurus consists of three segments: Alphabetic (an alphabetical listing of terms in the hierarchy together with cross references to other acceptable terms and scope notes clarifying ambiguous terms); Permuted (an alphabetical index which displays on a rotating basis each keyword of a multi-word term); and Hierarchical (an alphabetic array of all the "Broadest Terms"). Arranged alphabetically by subject term and author, the Subject Index contains full bibliographic information (author, title, source, pages, etc.). The Author/Title Index is arranged by interfiling authors and titles alphabetically. The Index also includes a key which lists the short form of the journal title as it appears in the Index, the publishing dates for the periodical title, the complete title, the publisher's address, and the institution at which the journal was indexed. (NQA)