Filiberto Felipe Martinez Arellano, RSC Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean

Filiberto Felipe is full professor and researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in the Information Organization area. He teaches cataloguing and metadata standards courses at the undergraduate and graduate programs on Library Science and Information Studies at UNAM. Additionally, he has been Chair of the Cataloging Department and Assistant  Director for Technical Services at UNAM General Direction for Libraries. He participated in the project for automation of books union catalog, LIBRUNAM, and the serials union catalog,  SERIUNAM, both of UNAM Library System, which include holdings from 140 branch university libraries

He has led projects to develop other union catalogues at UNAM, among them:  HUMAINDEX, which includes academic production of more than 1,000 UNAM scholars from the Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines; Union Catalog of Ancient Materials owned by  the National Library of Mexico and other Mexican libraries; and Union Catalog of patrimonial and artistic items owned by the UNAM entities.

Since 1974 he has organized the Cataloging and Metadata Meeting, whose objective is to share experiences and good practices about application and use of cataloguing and metadata standards among Mexican and Latin American libraries. In recent years, this has focused on RDA. He also coordinates the RDA Mexico Group (and has done so since its creation). In this group, Mexican cataloguers share experiences on RDA  use and application. Involved in the inception of ABINIA (the Association of National Libraries from Latin-American), he has promoted the creation of the  Latin America and the Caribbean RDA Group (RDA ALyC). He has organized the RDA Colloquium  in Latin America six times. He has also been a member of the IFLA cataloguing Section and is a former Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean on the RDA Board. 

He has given conferences,  training and advice on cataloguing, metadata and RDA  in diverse Latin American countries. He has published more than 200 articles and books about cataloguing and metadata, writing in Spanish and in English. In 2000 he was given an award for the "best article published in Cataloging and Classification Quarterly". He received the 2022 IFLA Medal for his contribution to cataloguing development in Latin America.

As well as serving as the first ever RSC Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, he coordinates the RDA Spanish translation.

Page updated: 11 July 2025.