In the context of Open Access the National Autonomous University of Mexico (known in Spanish as UNAM) develop one project for available to the all kind information product of academic work and research in science, social and humanities. The development includes the identification, compilation, organization, actualization and inventory of its documentary sources. From the project of the University, the Center for Research on North America (CISAN) delimits four collections; developing the Curatorial Database (BDC), standards were used for the registry, identifying those metadata that provide more information about a resource for the improvement of the user experience. CISAN Metadata for the documentary description Handbook was develop with the purpose of sharing the same language, enabled us to achieve an accurate analysis, and a unified access to information base on international standards. The handbook is divided in two parts: one, that includes: the concept, the history, the nature and features of the CISAN collections, and the other that holds the description of nearly 75 metadata, indicating name, definition, use, internal policy, tags, particular examples and the location of the sources, under international standards approved by the National Council of Science and Technology (known in Spanish as CONACYT).