Necessary tribute

Abstract

What are twenty-four years? If you think about how long it will take for them to pass, it seems like an eternity and, when they have already passed, you see that they have done it in a flash, in a breath; the children have grown up almost without our noticing, we don't even remember the fashions and there are more gray hairs in our heads than we could ever count. This feeling has been written about many times but, if we leave literature aside and go to the concrete, over twenty-four years many things happen, many, many things, and if we talk about our profession, dedicated to information for Science, let alone. Anyone who has been working in CSIC libraries or archives for some time knows that looking back produces a certain vertigo: we have gone from incipient automation in the 90s to consulting catalogs on cell phones; from reading on paper to electronic resources; from providing only on-site services to offering them remotely; from focusing on the processing of documentary materials to helping our users in the dissemination of scientific production. And these are just some of the things that have changed in our profession. All of this almost naturally, or so it seems to us because, in addition to riding the wave, it is convenient to have someone who can scan the horizon and know how to make the right decisions at all times.