| dc.description.abstract | In 2020, a group of library information science specialists at the University of Florida Libraries (UF) formed the Pan-American Authorities (PANA) group, a bilingual (English/Spanish) metadata working group dedicated to standardizing the creation of Spanish-language metadata to improve discoverability and access to digital collection materials published in Spanish. Recognizing our growing non-English collections, we found it important to address biases in North American cataloging and metadata practices, changing them to be more inclusive and representative of materials in our collections, their creators, and their users. However, the primary challenge was finding reliable authority files for assigning Spanish metadata that captured national and regional variations of the Spanish language. Prior to the formation of PANA, UF’s bilingual metadata specialist's primary resource for assigning Spanish metadata was lcsh-es.org, a bilingual English-Spanish database that aggregates six Spanish language authority files. While the convenience of accessing Spanish subject headings through a centralized platform was invaluable, over-reliance on this resource was problematic, notably because the authority files aggregated in lcsh-es.org predominantly originate from Europe or the United States. To address this, the PANA group began establishing a workflow that would allow for Latin American authority files to be utilized. Since its origin, the group has partnered with the University of Texas Austin Libraries, who have adapted the workflow to increase their Spanish metadata translation across several digital collections sites, representing materials from across Latin America, fostering greater accessibility for its users throughout the region. Collectively, the PANA group has successfully contributed approximately 700 terms to this resource, ranging from human rights themed-subject terms to genre forms. Currently, we are constructing a publicly accessible website, and the Pan-American Authorities (code: pana) is now an officially recognized subject heading source code by the Library of Congress. | |
