Bibliographic Description and Practices for Providing Access to Spanish Language Materials

Abstract

With the constant increase in the Hispanic population and with the expansion of Latin American Studies in the United States, we have become a gateway for Latin Americanists to expand research at our institutions and to bring scholarship from overseas. It is essential for scholars and librarians to reinforce and expand their approaches to Latin American studies and to engage in new multicultural, multidisciplinary dialogues, both in the academic and in the public sector. This article reviews some of the concepts and procedures involving the cataloging of Spanish language materials, highlighting the dilemmas that catalogers confront when processing this material, including initial articles, Spanish personal names, edition versus printing, publication date, and subject headings. It is based on a series of workshops conducted in the fall of 2007, sponsored by Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET).