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Starting from the importance of public library statistics collected in Spain, the value and useful-ness of these statistics are analyzed from the different perspectives that the authors have gained throu-ghout our professional careers: librarians, library associations, and researchers. Finally, we conclude that several improvements are necessary to enhance the quality of the data and their value and to achieve the engagement of all those involved in the collection, publication, and analysis of data.

The Spanish city of Burgos hosted the VI National congress of public libraries and the Europeana conference, October 9-11, 2012. The events shared venues and registrants under the theme of "Public library: individual memory, global heritage". Building the European memory requires the involvement of citizens and Europeana is working hard to achieve it. The difficulties encountered by public libraries attempting to become involved in the project are described, pointing out some of the things they can do to integrate local memory into the larger repositories.

The Internet, the new mobile devices and cloud storage are changing the way in which people deal with information; we still need great storage capacity and information readers but we also value ubiquity and data synchronization between the different devices that we are using. Access has become more important than storage. The web as a tool is leading to the obsolescence of digital media that are just 20 years old and boosts the multimedia possibilities of paper, an analog medium that facilitates the relationship between people and mobile devices. We go through some of the experiences carried out in the Muskiz public library exploring the new multimedia possibilities of paper.

The evolution of information technology and its relationship with libraries is reviewed, from the end of the twentieth century to the present, with a discussion of libaries’ response to technological changes, especially the internet and the web. A case study focuses on a small public library in Muskiz (Bizkaia/Biscay province), and its use of the social web to offer new library services. Cheaper access to technology may shift the capacity for innovation, from centres that have resources to acquire and manage proprietary solutions to institutions that modify their products and processes using open web services. We describe how scale affects a library’s access to technology and positions it in technological discontinuity: in the 20th century, technology was on the side of larger structures but currently they are penalized.

The term ‘one-person library’ is used within the English-speaking world in order to refer to libraries managed by just one person; ‘solo librarian’ refers to the professional in charge of those libraries. Although in Spain official statistics do not reflect this, the situation of most of the Spanish public libraries is similar to these ‘one-person libraries’; precarious working conditions, lack of resources, and professional loneliness are typical. If we take into account a working environment that is far from easy, we can see that everyday work does not provide enough time to think about the relevance of the services that the library offers, instead it is almost compulsory to replicate, without much thought, what other public libraries are doing, usually with more resources and different realities. To delegate the construction or essence of the library to others can be counterproductive to successfully face the challenge of adapting to a new digital environment. To adopt someone else’s strategies without taking into account its own peculiarities can make us fail and take us far from the essence of a suitable library for our community.

The economic crisis has been harmful for libraries. Although the studies that have been done by professional associations have given evidence of their economic and social value, the reasons given to justify budget cuts and closures show that the real problem is not an economic problem but one of perception: Politicians and citizens give libraries a secondary place when competing with other basic services for financing. Everyone recognizes the past importance of libraries, but few situate them in contemporary education, information, and knowledge. The future of libraries depends mostly on what people think of them. Professionals can help to build a new popular awareness that places value on the idea of the library’s utility and neutralizes its presumed digital obsolescence. In this sense, technology is changing the role that institutions play, as well as the space that they have traditionally occupied. Technology has also changed our expectations towards institutions. In order to make the library something appealing and useful, the librarian must be able to facilitate the interconnection (cooperation, networking, benchmarking, and co-creation) and seek to reduce the barriers between the library as an institution and the users.

For the first time there is a full-year report (of 2015) of ebook lending from Spanish public libraries, and the outcome does not seem entirely satisfactory. Although it is a short period of time in which to attempt to ascertain the success or failure of ebook lending, data reveals that the service must be improved. The low volume of titles, the lack of a joint catalogue, use of prohibitive DRM, and some other use conditions are even more restrictive than those for traditional print books, and all of this ultimately penalizes the readers’ experience. Librarians are sceptical about the viability of a the current ebook lending model for obvious reasons. These problems are not specific to Spanish public libraries. It is clear to the author that ebook lending is needed, but must follow different rules; the author advocates promoting and improving the visibility of public domain works and abandoning, if only temporarily, other onerous content that hinders other services.

Walking into a library to borrow a book has an expiration date. With digital loans, we will not be going to the library for books, but we still may go for a recommendation or an experience of shared reading. Knowing what our users are looking for, discussing and recommending, and using that information to offer a more personalized reading service, is vital for the future of ebook streaming services. Librarians need readers to create book collections that improve the user’s experience, and need to do our best to create an affective bond between the reader, the book and the library that brought them together.

Communication with the library user is being changed by the loss of the library’s information monopoly, the dematerialization of the book and the importance of technology in the non-face-to-face relationship. Within the new ways of communication, the ability to become used to tools and devices in a daily and non-work environment is essential. Library professionals must begin to understand the new ways of communication as a balance between the personal and profesional domains.

The economic crisis and the rapid advances of information technology have led to reflection about how libraries should face the digital challenge and the need to adapt daily work routines and professional profiles. This paper considers whether libraries are restrained environments that can have an inhibiting effect on their profesional staff, harming their adaptation to the new digital environment. There are several reasons for this: technology dependence, a workplace model that gives priority to established structures, the rigidity of the structures involved in the decision-making process, and attachment to our traditional roles.

The Spanish city of Burgos hosted the VI National congress of public libraries and the Europeana conference, October 9-11, 2012. The events shared venues and registrants under the theme of "Public library: individual memory, global heritage". Building the European memory requires the involvement of citizens and Europeana is working hard to achieve it. The difficulties encountered by public libraries attempting to become involved in the project are described, pointing out some of the things they can do to integrate local memory into the larger repositories.

The generation of new multimedia content that facilitates contact with mobile devices is a pending task for cultural agents. From the perspective of the public library, we take augmented reality as an example and the video game industry as a reference to demonstrate some possible actions.

Web 2.0 convergence with the mobile web is shifting the very nature of the Internet. Local multimedia holdings generated in a mobile-networked society often don’t fit with library catalogs. Their methods of diffusion and discovery move away from those associated with the traditional library and into social networking and new devices. Local archive-building in this new context requires content fitted to the new devices, skilled people to interact with them, and libraries that understand new forms of information demand and consumption. In order to find its place in this context, the library must combine its traditional role as a dynamic agent specialized in providing access to bibliographic resources with a new role as an advocate for informal web content.

Fernando Juárez Urquijo

Given the backwardness of public administrations to implement e-government tools in practice and in everyday life to make life easier for citizens, public libraries prove to be far more advanced, offering both technical infrastructure and advice to their users to search information and to carry out transactions. E-government suffers from technological inefficiency and also reflects little understanding of the transformation of the socio-technical framework and its impact in shaping relationships with citizens.

Gontzal Riancho

Short summary of the Web situation in 2010, analysing the situation of 2.0 technologies and their evolution to adapt to the new conditions of creation of, access to and dissemination of information. Taking into account the Spanish society, the most important changes in 2010 and how they can influence the services that libraries offer are described. Finally, some predictions about 2011 are envisaged.

With the advent of digital books it is recommended that librarians take an active role, defending the rights of citizens to be able to continue enjoying free reading, and also maintaining their own image of being up-to-date professionals. Librarians should know technical, economic and legal details of the publishing world to act on new fronts, such as being literary agents, promoters of issues of local interest or licensing consultants.

El libro tal y como es conocido desde la popularización de la imprenta está siendo sustituido por otros soportes y formatos; se intuyen nuevos modelos de negocio y nuevas formas de lectura que generan incertidumbres en autores, editoriales, librerías, bibliotecas y lectores. Ante los retos de la edición electrónica los objetivos del sector editorial y los de las bibliotecas no han de ser necesariamente coincidentes. La industria del libro necesita transformarse radicalmente para intentar controlar el emergente mercado digital y sus primeros movimientos revelan la apuesta por contenidos, formatos y dispositivos cerrados. Muchos usuarios van a tener su primera experiencia de lectura digital en los nuevos soportes (ebook, móvil, consola ) gracias a la biblioteca pública. La biblioteca puede utilizar la tecnología social para editar contenidos y fomentar nuevas formas de lectura al margen de los dictámenes del mercado. La biblioteca pública puede acometer una estrategia de edición digital para: -distribuir contenidos de calidad (propios o ajenos), contemplando los nuevos lenguajes de comunicación multimedia, en formatos abiertos y desligados de un determinado dispositivo. -Formar usuarios con criterio para que desarrollen un espíritu crítico ante los nuevos contenidos digitales. En esta comunicación presentamos la estrategia digital de la Biblioteca de Muskiz (Resumen del autor), Fernando Juárez Urquijo

[ES] Se describen aquí las herramientas de uso social de la información así como sus pros y sus contras. Además, se explica cómo navegar en internet con firefox, cómo el usuario puede etiquetar, clasificar y describir la web a su gusto o qué aplicaciones se pueden utilizar para enviar mensajes o información de forma inmediata. Todo un panorama usado en la biblioteca de Muskiz que permite crear nuevos productos y modificar rutinas de trabajo.

The quality of access to Internet determines, increasingly, the quality of the process of information. In this paper the conditions of use of the technology that allow the library to have access to quality services are analyzed. Once overcome the technological barriers (acquisition, curve of learning) we believe necessary to win a last obstacle: the mental one. The library remains anchored in an analogical model of management that prevents its access to the Internet in competitive conditions. Three are the barriers to overcome: the ferrous control of the administration as for information, the obstacles to the utilization of the new tools for safety issues and the excessive weight that still we grant to the management of traditional paper materials in the library. The use of the main tools of the social web are revised and the innovations got in Muskiz's library giving a use not foreseen to social tagging, to microblogging, to chat and to the initial pages are described. To combine our traditional skills with the spirit and the tools of the web participative at the moment of managing the information of the library favors the innovation in the services that we offer, the application of new forms of management and makes a more fluid and immediate relation possible with the patrons.

The evolution of information technology and its relationship with libraries is reviewed, from the end of the twentieth century to the present, with a discussion of libaries’ response to technological changes, especially the internet and the web. A case study focuses on a small public library in Muskiz (Bizkaia/Biscay province), and its use of the social web to offer new library services. Cheaper access to technology may shift the capacity for innovation, from centres that have resources to acquire and manage proprietary solutions to institutions that modify their products and processes using open web services. We describe how scale affects a library’s access to technology and positions it in technological discontinuity: in the 20th century, technology was on the side of larger structures but currently they are penalized.

[ES] Desde la biblioteca pública municipal de Muskiz (Bizkaia), se presenta un proyecto cooperativo que se ha llevado a cabo en Euskadi con la idea de mantener actualizado un sistema de información bibliográfica, es decir, un boletín de novedades accesible vía Internet para todo aquel que lo desee. Se explica cómo surgió la idea, cómo se puso en marcha y cuáles han sido los resultados.