The Faculty of Library and Information Science celebrates its 100th anniversary

The exhibition coincides with the Year of the Library and is curated by Teresa Manà and Mònica Baró, lecturers at the University of Barcelona. It can be visited from 17 February to 10 May 2015, in Room 4 of the Cotxeres multidisciplinary space at the Palau Robert.

“BiblioTec. One Hundred Years of Library Studies and Librarianship (1915-2015)” presents a chronological journey from 1915 —when the School of Librarians and the Network of Public Libraries were founded— to the present day, highlighting the most noteworthy events in Catalonia in the realm of libraries, information and documentation.

Events are classified into three periods:

1915-1939: creation and implementation

The exhibition shows the influence that public libraries and library studies have had through the history thanks to the boost given by Eugeni d'Ors at the beginning, and from 1920 by the managing work developed by Jordi Rubió i Balaguer, who created modern libraries focused on the reader and not on the book.

The first network of public libraries in Spain was consolidated during the Second Republic, when Rubió was the director of the School, the Library of Catalonia and the Network of Public Libraries. During the Civil War, he created a service of libraries at the front and promoted initiatives such as the travelling library.

1940-1975: the silent work

In post-war years, the School of Librarians suffered a total regression: the purging process of teaching profession, the compulsory nature of Spanish language and the prevalence of humanistic subjects over technical ones are some examples. First changes arrived in 1974: male students were accepted, it was renamed School of Bibliology, and the curriculum paid more attention to professionalization. During the dark years of the Francoist regime, public libraries achieved to keep their characteristic vocation for service, and in the sixties the first activities to promote Catalan culture were organised.

1976-2015: recovery and standardisation

With the restoration of democracy, libraries set up a great transformation process that enabled them to get up to date: they included new fields of knowledge —like documentation and teledocumentation—, and incipient computing systems. In 1983, studies were awarded university status. In 1999, they were integrated into the new Faculty of Library and Information Science of the University of Barcelona.

Concerning public libraries, they multiplied and modernised. From the nineties, libraries began to include automatic systems and new libraries were created on university campus. For the last years, studies have included the latest technological innovations in order to meet users' information and training needs.

For further information, please visit the site of the Palau Robert.