Challenging Colonial Practices of Accessibility and Representation

through Bilingual Metadata Angelibel Soto and Margarita Vargas-Betancourt

University of Florida

June 2019

Case Studies

1. The Cuban American Dream

2. Florida and Puerto Rico Digital Newspaper Project

3. Collaboration between Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba José Martí and the University of Florida

Archives and Colonialism

• Empires used extensive recordkeeping to control their colonies.

• They used classificatory systems (example: racial) to to ensure the hegemony of a small group of European colonists over indigenous, African, and Asian people.

• 1823- Monroe Doctrine derived into US hegemony over Latin America & the Caribbean.

• 1898- Spanish American War

• The U.S. also became an intellectual hegemonic power in part by collecting (“removing’) Latin American & Caribbean cultural heritage.

History of UF’s Latin American & Caribbean Collection (LACC)

• 1930- UF President Tigert created the Institute for

Inter-American Affairs.

• 1948- Farmington Plan

• 1951- Farmington Plan assigned UF as the repository for Caribbean material.

Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)

Florida Puerto Rico Digital Newspaper Project

Bilingual Subject Headings and Spanish Abstracts for La democracia.

http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu/permalink.jsp?20UF036739304

Chronicling America

The Cuban American Dream Timeline

Lcsh-es.org

Latin American Authority Files • LEMBBIDEXARMARC

• Lista de encabezamientos de materia para bibliotecas (LEMB)Bilindex (BIDEX)Lista ARMARC de encabezamientos de materia para bibliotecas mayors (ARMARC)

• Colombian

• Preferred by Latin America

• RENIB

• (base de datos de autoridad)

• Chile

• EBFEM

• Encabezamientos bilingües de la Fundación Educativa Ana G. Méndez

• Puerto Rico

• UNAM

• Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

• Mexico

Latin American Authority Files • Not extensive

• Example: Jews

• LCSH: 375

• ARMARC: 23

• Pay each vendor an annual licensing fee

• BIDEX http://www.bilindex.com/BilindexOnline.htm

• ARMARC http://www.rojaseberhard.com.co/herramientas-bibliotecarias.html

• Not accessible

• UNAM http://132.248.67.3:8991/F/-/?func=find-b-0&local_base=MX011

• Hard to find

• RENIB https://www.renib.cl/

• EBFEM

Faceted Application of Subject

Terminology (FAST):

• Better search functionality with

OPAC’s and digital libraries

• Spanish language authority files not

extensive enough for strings

Strings vs. Facets

Fast ID: 894950

Celebrating Cuba! Collaborative Digital Collections of Cuban Patrimony

Dean Judy Russell, Dr. Rebecca Jefferson, and Lauren Krefs from UF with Adela Dworin, President of the community at

Gran Sinagoga Bet Shalom (March 2018)

Challenges

1. The difficulty of recruiting and keeping catalogers with a good grasp of Spanish

2. Finding reputable authority files of Spanish language subject headings that are compatible

3. FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology)

4. Spanish national and regional variation and colonialism

Solutions

• Recruitment of catalogers who can read and write Spanish.

• The design of well-defined, contained, and sustainable projects that can function as pilots.

• Centralization and collaboration with other institutions, in order to develop Spanish language datasets.

Questions

Angie Soto luarita@ufl.edu

Margarita Vargas-Betancourt mvargasb@ufl.edu