Bilingual (English/Spanish) Metadata for Digital Collections: Home

The Bilingual Metadata Specialist assigns Spanish metadata, primarily for Spanish language content within University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC), to ensure optimized user access for Spanish speakers. As metadata is prepared for ingestion into UFDC, the Bilingual Metadata Specialist will consult Spanish-language authority files and assign Spanish-language equivalents for existing English subject and genre keywords present within an OCLC record (generally these are FAST, LCSH, and more). Moreover, the Bilingual Metadata Specialist assigns new Spanish subject and genre terms based on the information provided in a record's notes and other fields. Additionally, the Bilingual Metadata Specialist coordinates the development and maintenance of the Pan-American Authorities (PANA), a bilingual English/Spanish subject headings list jointly developed by library professionals at the University of Florida and the University of Texas at Austin. 

The Bilingual Metadata Specialist is responsible for updating UFDC records that contain Spanish-language subject or genre terms that lack a subject or genre authority. Generally, subject and genre terms in UFDC are sourced from a Spanish authority file (see examples of Spanish-language authorities below), but in instances where they are not, the goal is to substitute those Spanish terms (known as local terms) with a term from PANA, thereby enhancing user discovery in UFDC by minimizing discrepancies in Spanish metadata.

Additionally, the Bilingual Metadata Specialist routinely updates UFDC records to add terms from PANA to records with Spanish subject or genre terms sourced from other Spanish-language authorities, ensuring comprehensive and consistent metadata across the platform.

In order to ensure a more inclusive metadata practice that aligns with the mission of the Bilingual (English/Spanish) Metadata Working Group, a bilingual metadata workflow for digitization projects has been created. This process involves consulting a diverse array of Spanish-language subject authorities in addition to those aggregated in lcsh-es.org in order to ensure that Spanish description is representative of the Spanish-language materials in our collections, their creators, and our users.  

Example: Spanish Metadata Assignment for Cuban Law Items

Bilingual Metadata Workflow for Digitization Projects: Steps

Step 1: Consult Spanish-language authority files to gather Spanish equivalents for English subject and genre terms. At the moment, the Bilingual Metadata Specialist routinely consults the following Spanish-language resources:

1. Lemb Digital (Subscription required)
2. Armarc en Línea 2.0 (Subscription required)
3. Catálogo Colectivo de Autoridades Bibliográfica (CCAB)
4. Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE)
5. lcsh-es.org (Free but requires user to create account)

Step 2: Compile terms into a spreadsheet, selecting the most frequently appearing version as the preferred term for assignment.

Step 3: Track BIBID(s) and number of affected fields using batch data sheet to ensure that Spanish metadata terms assigned using this workflow are tracked.

• This step enables the Bilingual Metadata Specialist to track PANA terms that are assigned using this workflow. If the preferred Spanish term changes after undergoing the PANA workflow, updates to UFDC can be applied to ensure that the official PANA term is assigned instead.

Step 4: Finally, the chosen term will be incorporated into the PANA working terms list and proceed through the PANA workflow.