Breaking the language barrier: Describing chicano archives with bilingual finding aids

Abstract

As American society becomes more diverse, archivists increasingly work with multilingual collections and patrons. In Arizona, this situation occurs most frequently with materials created by individuals and communities using Spanish as their primary language. This case study discusses Arizona State University's creation of English and Spanish finding aids for six collections processed as part of a Council on Library and Information Resources grant. It describes the process of creating a Spanish finding aid template; reviews the challenges encountered and solutions designed while translating, encoding, and publishing Spanish guides; and analyzes use of the final documents.