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Written communication is an essential skill for information professionals. Therefore, it is common to implement writing tasks to develop this skill in higher education. However, it is known that students' learning style preferences can influence improved written communication skills unequally among students, considering practice with writing tasks. This study examined how learning style preferences can influence the improvement of written communication skills in a blended learning environment for university students in information and management control engineering. Over seven semesters, 215 students participated in writing tasks supported by a discussion forum, and their learning style preferences were measured and analyzed using the Honey and Mumford model. Student performance on the online forum was repeatedly measured to determine the variation in written communication skills according to different learning style preferences and to identify which students benefited most from the intervention. The results indicate that although students' primary learning style preference influences their performance in written communication, these skills improve regardless of the learning style preference. Students with a primary "reflector" learning style preference were the most numerous and achieved the greatest learning gains. Students with a "theorist" learning style preference demonstrated medium-sized improvements in spelling and writing, and students with an "activist" learning style preference had small but significant increases in the quality of their justification and argumentation. Overall, the results suggest that learning style preferences are a relevant individual characteristic for personalizing electronic or hybrid learning environments in writing tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the societal impact of research from the perspective of interconnected genres. Information reaches professionals outside academia through many different types of documents. Those documents often connect with scholarship by referencing academic work, mentioning professors, or publishing articles authored by scholars. Here the pattern of referencing journal articles is compared across professional genres. Such citation counts make visible societal impacts to the extent that a field engages a genre, and different genres favor different fields. Biomedical sciences are most visible in patent citation counts. News and social media most often reference medicine. Policy documents make heavy use of social science. Ulrich’s indexing of trade journals, magazines, and newspapers suggests social sciences engage heavily with the professions through trade press. However, caution is warranted when using citations to indicate societal impact. Engagement with scholarship occurs not only through referencing but also through authorship and mentions. Not all citations indicate substantive engagement, particularly in social media. Academic literature is but one of many types of sources referenced in professional genres. And scholarship engages with many genres beyond those currently indexed, most notably trade press. Nevertheless, understanding citation patterns across heterogeneous professional genres offeres a promising frontier for information sciences to provide a foundation for the analysis of scholarship’s societal impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have analyzed the reading habits of university students, demonstrating the benefits of voluntary reading for academic performance. It is thus paradoxical that a large fraction of university students only read instrumentally and are far from adopting stable reading habits. This general situation is repeated among future professionals in the education field, whose personal reading experiences have been proven to have a decisive influence on their training and professional practice. Students on information and documentation degree courses are among the group of future professionals who are strongly linked to reading and who must attain competence in reading and comprehension. The main aim of this study is to use a sample of 214 students on information and documentation degree courses at six Spanish universities to analyze the professional profiles of most interest to them and their relationship with reading, both at a global level and depending on their chosen profile. The results reveal that many students have not identified a clearly defined professional profile. We also confirm findings from other studies on reading habits and behaviors, where it is evident that voluntary reading is not part of their lifestyle, albeit with some differences here between students depending on the professional profile selected. These results support the idea that, although some of these competences do not seem to have a strictly information or documentation nature, given the importance given to them in professional opportunities related to these studies, their reinforcement should be considered in future revisions of such degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze online job ads to identify the digital competences that companies and organizations demand from information professionals. This information is obtained from a content analysis of online job ads. Their retrieval from the web is terminological, and specialists select ads that include knowledge, activities, or requirements related to information science and digital transformation. After the ad format is standardized, the ads are analyzed using an ad hoc taxonomy for categorization. The taxonomy and the corpus of the ads are compared using automatized XML files in Apache Solr. Based on the taxonomy, we approach the text of the ads. The obtained data are stored as CSV files, from which we generate the general and specific groups of knowledge. The results are displayed according to classes of knowledge and professional profiles, focusing on those that relate to digital transformation. We explain the activity branches and the transversal informatics knowledge of the companies offering the positions. The specific knowledge in the digital environment is then presented, interpreted, and grouped according to the ads' most characteristic facets: digital objects, data banks; digital services; data analysis; knowledge banks and artificial intelligence; software; knowledge organization systems (KSO); rights and values; and web and portals. These facets are distinguished by their frequency and by the transformations they generate in professional activities. We conclude by considering the appearance of profiles that are quite removed from traditional denominations and activities, as well as considering the effects of digital transformation in a highly complex labor market and on the development of digital competences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to present, analyze, and compare the main deontological recommendations published by various international institutions and organizations since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis. A total of 10 codes were identified from the period between February and April 2020, during which the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 outbreak a global pandemic. Additionally, three general and transnational model deontological texts published before the crisis have been included in this analysis. The methodology used in this paper includes a content analysis based on four categories corresponding to the fundamental pillars of most deontological codes: truth, freedom, responsibility, and justice. Furthermore, this paper determines the most common ethical guidelines and criteria presented in all the analyzed texts and, with the goal of helping information and journalistic professionals, these guidelines are used as a reference point to propose an outline of recommendations for the responsible coverage of the Covid-19 crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about notable changes in our society, including new forms of relationships and work. It has especially affected the professions related to the health system, which includes health science librarians, who are responsible for providing up-to-date and high-quality information to health workers on the front line of this fight. This article presents the work of a group of professionals working in Spanish health science libraries (#AyudaBiblioteca), organized to collaborate and provide a better response to the information needs resulting from Covid-19. It has 90 participants, mainly from hospital libraries, as well as from research organizations, scientific societies, professional associations, ministries, universities, health technology evaluation agencies, and independent professionals. WhatsApp has been used as a means of communication, and Google Drive as a document repository. Resources are displayed on a public website, and search strategies are deposited in Diigo. Twitter is used with the hashtags #AyudaBiblioteca and #COVID19 as an external means of communication to receive and disseminate information. This collaboration has allowed us to join forces in the search for and coordinate collection of reliable, evidence-based, proven, and high-quality information, demonstrating the benefits of teleworking and online collaboration. The benefits of open science and how it improves research are also reflected upon. This initiative shows the importance of health science librarians in supporting health, academic, and research staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic has introduced challenges throughout the world and is endangering people's prosperity. To these health, economic, political, and social challenges have been added those related to the management and dissemination of information, mainly concerning its exponential growth, veracity, and dissemination. Providing objective evidence-based information contributes to meeting these challenges. Social media and social networks are playing a key role in informing society about the evolution of the pandemic and progress towards its eradication. However, social networks are also a vehicle for the transmission of biased or false news that can endanger people's health. Information professionals play a key role in correcting misinformation if they are able to filter out untruthful information and make resources with proven quality available to the population. In addition, they must manage scientific information about the pandemic, which is advancing at an accelerated pace. Currently, China is the leader while Spain is in fifth place in the development of research projects and scientific publications. The scientific research focuses on epidemiological aspects, respiratory diseases, drug treatments, and diagnostic tests. Many journals, databases, repositories, and other information systems have made their publications and other information resources available in record time to encourage the progress of such research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific community is facing one of its greatest challenges in solving a global health problem: the Covid-19 pandemic. This situation has generated an unprecedented volume of publications. What is the volume of scientific publications on Covid-19? The general objective of this research work is to obtain a global vision of the daily growth of scientific production on Covid-19 in various databases (Dimensions, Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, PubMed, and eight repositories). In relation to the results obtained, Dimensions indexes a total of 9,435 publications (69% with peer review and 2,677 preprints) well above Scopus (1,568) and WoS (718). This is a classic bibliometric phenomenon of exponential growth (R2 = 0.92). The daily global growth rate is 500 publications and the production doubles every 15 days. In the case of PubMed the weekly growth is around 1,000 publications. Of the eight repositories studied, PubMed Central, medRxiv and SSRN are the leaders, but despite their contribution, journals continue to be the core of scientific communication. Finally, it has been established that three of every four publications on the Covid-19 are available in open access. The information explosion which places us, information professionals, at the centre of the information pandemic demands a serious and coordinated response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A contextual approach to the phenomenon of false news in the field of information and documentation is presented, taking into account the role that professionals in the sector can exercise efficiently. We present a description of projects, both from library institutions and their professionals, and from the education and communication sectors, also affected and involved in the problem of fake news and post-truth. In the conclusions the required revision of a series of practices and activities so far developed is stated, with both the participation and the collaboration with other professional sectors involved, and the implementation of training projects in digital and media literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of the information professional in the communication management department of organizations is discussed. The need to integrate an information specialist within the communication team is essential; either hired from outside the organization or trained from within. Communication management is no longer limited to a press department handling press releases, but is instead a comprehensive communication management effort dealing with internal and external relations; and policies about intangible assets like reputation, image, and value creation through brand. In this article we review the tasks that are demanded by companies of their communication departments and compare them with the skills of information professionals. This job requires a cross-fertilization effort and a task map is used to illustrate how information professionals can perform in the communication area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Se plantea una discusión actualizada del concepto de infonomista. Para ello, en primer lugar se recupera la propuesta original de infonomista (e infonomía), esbozada por Cornella en 1998 y se apuntan sus implicaciones. En segundo lugar, se recopilan y comentan definiciones del término publicadas posteriormente. Finalmente, se discuten los siguientes aspectos: la combinación de conocimiento científico de la información actualmente disperso en varias disciplinas, la evolución del significado de información en el discurso científico y en el lenguaje coloquial, y el posicionamiento de diversos actores y colectivos. Todo ello conlleva establecer una selección de potencialidades y retos para el futuro desarrollo y valorización del concepto de infonomista, y su proyección académica y profesional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New technologies require an upgrade of LIS professionals' skills. This study analyzes changes in the field and suggests guidelines to improve LIS curriculum. We have carried out a content analysis of 20 curricula from LIS educational programs to identify terms associated with technological skills. In addition, we identified terms related to new competences from 735 job openings published on generic web sites and 170 on specific web sites. These terms include marketing, management, and content management, mainly related to web applications. The results confirm a positive trend in the demand for technological skills related to LIS. Nevertheless, there is a need to increase awareness about the competences and abilities of LIS professionals, because many relevant job openings are listed in other job categories. Therefore, we have collected a list of key technological skills. In conclusion, it is clear that computer science and the Internet are bringing new opportunities to LIS professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of information professional profiles is necessary in order to develop studies for the current labor market and to improve professional development for students. A literature review was carried out on selected papers published within the last two decades. Findings indicate that faculty must address the definition and acquisition of skills to prepare students for a dynamic and constantly changing professional environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication jobs live in a constant state of debate about their identity and role. With the advent of digital technologies, this debate has intensified and there are those who even deny the need for these professionals. This article discusses the main arguments for and against employing communication professionals and concludes with optimistic projections as a result of the emerging hyperconnected environment which will open many career opportunities for communication specialists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Librarians are playing a secondary role in the process of evaluating research activities, usually as auxiliary providers of raw data extracted from pre-selected sources. Given the subjective nature of the decision committees, there is a strong need for unbiased and objective procedures guaranteed by independent professionals. A neutral, comprehensive, modern, quantitative approach guided by academic librarians is proposed, including closeness to applicants, anonymity of their identities in the reports, contextualization (academic age, gender, and discipline) of data, usage of relative non-central values with indication of thresholds, and incorporation of new bibliometric and non-bibliometric sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The documentary criteria that researchers and professionals think are essential for assessing Internet information sources and for implementing these sources in news libraries are presented. Results of a Delphi study conducted in 2013 with eight experts in news librarianship and a survey of 81 news librarians working in Spanish media are discussed. Aspects such as the impact of digital sources on news libraries, their frequency of use, the type of resource searched, and the consequences for professional routines in these centres are analyzed. 86.4% of respondents use the Internet every day to search for information. Documentation centres of the Spanish mainstream media have not established a policy for the selection of information sources on the Web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study takes the old myth of objectivity in media discourse to one of the most important but unrecognized actors in the process of its construction: the mass media information scientist or documentalist. Accepting the subjective presence of the documentalist in his/her productions this article opts for the recognition explicit statement of this role recommending two actions. First we suggest that public higher education institutions combine the technical training of mass media documentalists with training in critical thinking skills. Our study analysed the subjects covered in course syllabi to detect the deficiencies to be addressed in meeting this objective. Second we propose alternative lines of training that can contribute to cross-training of mass media documentalists in those degree programs to ensure that they acquire the needed skills in critical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of museum communication is examined from the perspective of the professionals in charge of this task, characterizing the practical circumstances, perceptions, and specifics of the communication area. Through a series of interviews with managers of a group of Chilean museums, we identified elements to consider and problems that often affect museum communications in general, despite the diversity of these institutions. In the museums examined, we observed different ways of understanding the concept of communication. Such differences are linked to geographical location, ownership or affiliation, as well as other dimensions of the museum such as mission, objectives of the institution, and the communications vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, very few studies have classified and analysed the evolution of the business activities carried out by Spanish companies that provide information and document management services. Aware of the importance that these issues have for university centers and for graduate students of library and information science, this article presents the results obtained from an analysis of these companies, comparing them with available data from previous studies. Types of services currently offered by these companies, their geographical distribution, business scope, size and age, current data on their employment and selection policies, and future prospects in the midst of the current economic crisis are described. Novel contributions of this report are the analysis of business scope and age of these companies and the factors they take into account when selecting their employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a survey research in 10 documentation centres of Spanish television stations. The authors analyze first the current situation of television documentation tasks after digitization, and the emergence of journalists participation in some of these tasks. Second, we analyze the implementation level, typology and problems of developing documentary products in the documentation centres. For the first time we report a map of the implementation of documentary products in the Spanish television stations. Other results found were: journalists perform the selection of the original materials in 8 of the 10 television stations studied; few documentary products combine text and audiovisual information, and these are usually created for internal use in the news room and not for the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TVE (Spanish public TV) news services have undergone a great changeover to a digital production system. The current situation after five years of experience is described, along with the evolution of tools, procedures and professional profiles during this time. The new design of content management is described, understood as the control of media from the point of entry to the production system to recovery from the digital file for reuse. In the center of this cooperative and integrated approach to content management is the content manager, that structures the system and the articulation between the different components. At the beginning of 2009, 100% of the Archive material came from videotape recordings. In 2012, only 18%: the other 82% were restorations from digital Archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of training and education in information and documentation is reviewed, starting with the first systematic professional education initiatives in the 19th century. Some of the current key challenges and future action lines are discussed: clarifying the mission, the ecological niche and strategic objectives of the discipline; taking care of the disciplinary core and addressing the peripheries; building and looking after the brand and main stakeholders, relocating the student as a prime client; negotiating a permanent observation point to allow the design of curricula based on the labour-market and student needs; programming the educational levels within the framework of life long education; rebuilding and pursuing the interdisciplinary dimension of information studies; modulating technological training according to social changes and student profiles; and ensuring operational quality and addressing the continuous evidence-based improvement of the pedagogical methods. The reflection focuses on the Spanish case, but incorporates an international perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technical solutions for content management have reached a high level of maturity. Under the heading of ECM (enterprise content management), several technical approaches for the management of unstructured information have been grouped. The acceptance of content management in different contexts is indicative of the value that these practices contribute to organizations. There is, however, a risk of interpreting this maturity as a synonym for being past its prime: we should consider whether there are still some opportunities for improvement and niches of activity on which to focus efforts, or if instead there is little room for innovation. The author contends that once we have laid the foundation for the deployment of such solutions and content management has become a familiar term for information technology (IT) users, there remain many opportunities related to: a) the analysis of data usage and user experience, including complex issues such as opinion mining, and b) the design of ECM solutions that combine best practices in the areas of IT and information management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the role of communication in the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a vital management system for achieving advantages and motivation in employees. The paper also highlights the relevant functions assumed by information professionals to overcome communication deficiencies and lack of knowledge about these relatively new areas of responsibility. A case study of Crédit Agricole España (CAE) is presented, with results that highlight the importance of all the communication-related aspects of implementing CSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to serve as a gateway to the world of geographic information systems (GIS), seen as technologies to support decision-making services in libraries and information units. Through the review of various projects that make use of GIS technologies in libraries, the concept of GIS and its synergies with information units is introduced. Finally, the paper points out different contexts and situations, in relation to information units, in which GIS could be used to improve services and products by information professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law and Information are two concepts that need each other, although the complexity of their relationship is not always fully understood. We propose an overview of the main areas where this relationship is more intimate and fundamental. To make this overview more comprehensive we will focus on the three functions that Law can exercise over Information: hide, preserve and share. All topics discussed are highly related and the discussion of one has to take into account the other. The good news is that Law has been responding to the needs of the society due to the challenges posed by technological and social changes for millenia and it has the tools to do it again. For this, legal practitioners need the support of information professionals to guide them through all the new phenomena arising from digital information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to both the digitization of press archives and the current financial, economic and journalistic recession, news libraries in online journalism need to re invent themselves. While performing their traditional tasks, news librarians are developing new skills so that their activity will continue to be considered a necessary and natural component of quality journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science is the most refined cultural element to describe and manage the environment. It is the result of a permanent evolutionary algorithm and represents an adaptive biological advantage for the human species. Science evolves socially through physical records and information media, whose changes influence both science and society. Information professionals have been managing these physical records or knowledge containers. The technodigital revolution grows an industrialized information society where science is a productive workforce, with a neurodigital nature, and develops as a collective enterprise. Science containers are now very changeable, plural, segmented, networking, and take on a business look: they become "specific information platforms". Information professionals' position is rather weak, but they have the possibility to turn into information engineers, to participate in some of those platforms and to compete individually as information managers in the science arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional need to collect, care for and make available a huge collection of physical items has shaped the education, work and even the sense of identity of information professionals, as well as the services provided by libraries. As the infrastructure related to physical items increasingly disappears from our responsibilities, we need to fundamentally rethink how we go about our mission to collect, organize, preserve and make available the information resources of the human enterprise. Various topics that are transforming the information professional's environment are discussed, including digitization, digital collections, open access, information abundance, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 11th Spanish Documentation Conference (Jornadas Españolas de Documentación) was held May 20-22, 2009 in Saragossa, Spain, organized by the Spanish Federation of Societies of Archivology, Librarianship, Special librarianship and Museology (Fesabid). Socioprofessional networks served as a thread this year and provided cohesion to a large number of presentations by professionals from different areas of libraries, documentation and archives. We discuss some of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public administration in the developed countries is designing information initiatives to manage risk information using web-based systems. These sites are intended to deliver information to citizens, but also have valuable information for experts and authorities. Five web sites are compared and a simple methodology is provided to extract conclusions and propose recommendations in an information management dimension that is key to saving not only property but human lives as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biography of news researcher Liz Donovan, who died in 2008, serves as a thread of a journey through the profession of news librarian and describes the evolution of newspaper newsrooms throughout 40 years. Information systems and resources have changed -from paper clippings to the Internet and Web 2.0-, but the economic situation of the press has also changed, leading to cutbacks. Unfortunately, with the mistaken idea that "everything is on the Internet", news companies are devaluing the contributions made by information professionals to newspaper content, and often close or decimate the news libraries, thus losing an important amount of know-how and quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the results of a survey on working life, answered by 183 graduates in Information Science studies of the Universidad de Zaragoza, between the years 1992 and 2006. The results can be summarized in that these professionals improve their academic results with respect to other previous studies due to their motivation throughout the studies. The expectations for job access of these graduates have been fulfilled in most of the cases, and they spent an average of thirteen months looking for a job. A great part of these workers are employed in specific functions of Information Science. Nevertheless, most of them don't belong to any Professional Association of Information Sciences. In spite of this, we can conclude that these studies must be better known in order to show everybody what opportunities are available to these professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since March 2007, a group of information professionals from the autonomous region of Madrid has been working voluntarily and independently on the creation of a professional college for archivists, librarians and information scientists. However, it is necessary to present a bill at the region's Parliament to be finally approved into law. This action developed as a reaction against the lack of an official organism to regularise this profession. The professional college will be in charge of representing and defending the profession and maintaining the relations with central and regional governments, the private sector, other professional colleges and universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, governments have spent large amounts of money to computerize the public administration, but unfortunately they have forgotten to consult those most aware of information management, a mistake that sometimes have paid dearly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of a well defined model of information representation on the web has produced several problems related to processing information. In an effort to resolve these problems, the W3C has proposed the semantic web project. This new scenario offers both possibilities and difficulties for the future. Special attention is given to ontologies, fundamental tools for the representation of knowledge on the semantic web. Finally, the role of library and information professionals is considered in this new context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production of technical documentation has increased considerably over the last few years, as reflected by the development of the GILT (globalisation, internationalisation, localisation, translation) industry. The production cycle for multilingual technical documentation is an industrial process undergoing several different phases. One of these phases is translation, which in professional environments systematically uses computer-aided translation systems. These systems manage linguistic resources such as translation memories and terminology databases, which are exploited by extracting, retrieving and reusing data. These linguistic resources together with technical documents are the most important linguistic assets a translation company has. Therefore, an information policy based on documentary strategies is necessary to prevent the under-utilisation of such assets and thus to improve their exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resumen: El paso de la sociedad industrial a la sociedad de la informacióny del conocimiento comportará importantes cambios en las organizacionesy un nuevo papel de los servicios de información y de los profesionales.Son necesarias nuevas competencias, gran parte de ellas ligadas a la formaciónpermanente, pero también (y estos aspectos adquieren cada vez mayorimportancia) nuevas actitudes y aptitudes. Se demanda un mayor compromisoy ser capaz de aportar valor a la propia organización y a la sociedaden general. Title: The professional in the third millennium: a commitment to societyand organisations.Abstract: The information and knowledgesociety that is supplanting the industrial society will produce importantchanges in organisations and ultimately will require infomation professionalsand services to assume new roles. New areas of competence (tied directly tocontinuing education) will be necessary, as well as new attitudes and aptitudeswhich will become increasingly more important. Employees will have to contributeto knowledge creation and to offer true value to both the organisation andto the society as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resumen: Se presenta un panorama de la estructuración de información documental por medio de lenguajes de marcado. Se hacen notar dos líneasde problemas: de estándares de descripción y del mercado de software. Dentro de la primera se describe la sintaxis concreta de sgml, elsubconjunto html y la extensión xml. Respecto a la segunda se tipificala oferta en el mercado. Finalmente se considera el lugar del profesionalde la información en este contexto, enfatizando su importancia parael desarrollo de la web semántica en general y, especialmente, en herramientasde apoyo a la misma, como las ontologías. Title: Documents and markup language: concepts, problems and trends.Abstract:This article presents a panorama of the documental information that is structured using markup languages. This subject presents two different issues: description standards and software market limitations. Within the first we find sgml concrete syntax, the html subset and xml. The second presents itself as a typification of software products in the market. Having described these matters, the article reflects upon the role of the information professional in this context emphasizing his importance for the development of the Semantic Web in general and the tools that such Web needs, such as ontologies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Technology watch and competitive intelligence activities form a basic tool for improving organizations' competitiveness. Their success depends on the knowledge management systems upon which they are based. This paper describes the relationship between information management (and professionals working in the field) and technology watch and competitive intelligence activities. Also presented are some of the major agents – mainly in Spain – who are working in the area of technology watch and competitive intelligence, as well as some international portals. Together, these entities constitute a valuable source of information on this subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The success of information professionals in the coming years will depend on their commitment to research and development in the areas of identification, access, retrieval, storage, description and assessment of the vast amount of resources available. This research effort should be coordinated with computer scientists, not to seek their cooperation in specific technical tasks and developments, but to make significant progress in frontier areas of content sciences. Greater project participation by librarians is proposed, especially in European or international consortia, paying particular attention to the implementation of standards, advocacy of open access, exploitation of new interfaces, data networking and digitization. The process should include ethical issues, involve end users, promote resource integration platforms and extend formats coverage beyond text documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profession of information scientist is considered with a historical perspective and the author tries to figure out the reason for his identity crisis. It is suggested that uniting with librarians and archivists has proved harmful in the long run, perhaps even a drag on their development and their more dynamic image. The author doesn't expect the situation will change in the short term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Luis Collado answers some questions about the Google Book Search program. He describes what it is and what it is not. His words reveal Google's philosophy of universal access to information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resumen: Experiencias recientes y concretas ligadas a procesos de implantaciónde sistemas del conocimiento a través de intranets corporativas muestranel importante papel que pueden tener los profesionales de la información.En estos casos, el profesional especialista en "metaconocimiento", en cuantodesarrolla metodologías de creación, captación, evaluación,difusión y aprovechamiento del conocimiento, ha conseguido unos resultadosmuy positivos para la organización, y para él mismo un reconocimientode la labor realizada ya que su trabajo le ha comportado asumir un rol deliderazgo dentro de su organización. Title: Professional activity and social roles: "metaknowledge" managers.Abstract: Recent experiences, in which knowledge systems have been implemented on corporateintranets, have highlighted the important role that information professionalscan play. In these cases the professional -converted into a "metaknowledge"specialist by developing methodologies for creating, capturing, evaluating,promoting and sharing knowledge- has achieved very positive results for boththe organisation and the professional's own career, as he/she takes on a leadershiprole within the organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]