The first steps of the Historical Archive of the Biological Mission of Galicia (ABL)… or how it all began

Abstract

They say that a journey of ten thousand kilometres begins with a single step… …even if it is down a spiral staircase. The trigger was the collapse of the damp basement where much of the documentation from the offices of our retired researchers had ended up: books, magazines, work folders, correspondence, offprints… It was not the first time that, when the weather was favourable, beetles had climbed in droves up the spiral staircase to the ground floor, disturbing its inhabitants. Something had to be done with all that, to remove the boxes and bundles that were impeding passage and cleaning.