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Fact checking is becoming an essential journalistic task because of the proliferation of misinformative content disseminated massively through social media and other channels. Based on this observation, the fundamental objective of the research that serves as the basis for this paper was to learn about the Spanish journalists' professional routines and training in fact-checking. The authors developed a 29-item questionnaire distributed via email to journalists nationwide between May and June 2023 to collect the information. We obtained 326 responses, resulting in several findings: a) the implementation of data verification is not uniform, being more frequent in some types of media --newspapers and verification platforms-- and in large corporations; b) workload is an obstacle that prevents most journalists from devoting as much time to verification as it would require; c) some areas generate more problems when it comes to cross-checking data --such as politics and economics--; d) the preferred sources for verification are academic and official sources --governments, state security forces-; e) the digital tools that are known or used by professionals still have low penetration rates, with only some exceptions; f) although the perception of the respondents is that they are sufficiently trained for verification work, only a minority have received specific training in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of Communication in Spain is analyzed, contextualizing Spanish output at a global and local level between the years 2000 and 2020. Based on a descriptive bibliometric analysis of the Communication category of the Social Sciences Citation Index database, part of Web of Science, the impact of the main countries is identified. The weight of the output in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) database between 2015 and 2020 is also studied. An analysis of the output by universities in Spain for the period 2010–2020 is also carried out, comparing it with the impact and the works in the first quartile. The results reveal that Spain has been the fourth country in terms of output in Communication in the last decade and that Austria stands out as the country whose works have the greatest impact. It is also observed that 67% of Spain’s works in Communication are published in journals that are indexed in ESCI. The impact of Spanish universities is very close to the world average. The Universitat Pompeu Fabra stands out, publishing the most articles and, furthermore, being the Spanish university with most papers in the first quartile of the JCR in Communication between 2010 and 2020. The study of the Shanghai Ranking by area includes eight Spanish universities, only three of which have output in Communication that comes mainly from professors in this area. The role of the Spanish journals Comunicar and Profesional de la información is notable, as they publish a large fraction of the output by Spanish universities in the Communication field. Finally, this paper presents the challenges of research in Communication, as well as those related to its bibliometric analysis, and a reflection on the problems that affect scientific production and research in this subject area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the social structure of Spanish and Latin American communication researchers through the representation and analysis of three coauthorship networks at the national, institutional, and individual level. Such networks are built from papers indexed in the 'Communication' category by Web of Science and published between 2000 and 2019 by authors attached to a Spanish or Latin American institution (n = 5,040). The goal is to characterize the structural features of each network, identify the most central actors, and illustrate the most relevant relationships among nodes. The results show that the most central country is Spain, followed by the USA and other European nations. Among the Latin American states, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico are placed at the most relevant nodes. Latin American collaboration is preferentially addressed to the USA, especially since 2015. Regarding institutions, Spanish public universities in Madrid and Catalonia achieve the highest degrees of centrality. However, the most central Latin American institutions are private universities. The most relevant authors are Spanish researchers until 2015, when they are replaced at the top by Latin American scholars. Collaboration at both the individual and institutional levels shows a deep regional tendency, while the internationalization of researchers and universities is only more visible since 2015. This work identifies a tendency towards internal cohesion at different network levels as the number of connected nodes grows in each period. We conclude that a proper Spanish-Latin America community of communication researchers does not exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the use of Twitter by the candidates for the presidency of the Government of Spain of the five main parties at the national level -PSOE, PP, Vox, Podemos and Ciudadanos- of the general elections campaigns held in April and November 2019. The main purpose of our study is to determine the strategies used of the microblogging network by the leaders, both in terms of activity, interaction and notoriety and in terms of topics and discursive development, as well as their similarities and differences. The secondary objective is to study the evolution of these strategies both between the two campaigns and with respect to previous elections. To this end, the research is based on a content analysis methodology that studies quantitative, qualitative and discursive elements. The results reveal an uneven use of Twitter in terms of the frequency of updates, but similar in terms of its unidirectionality, with scarce interaction with other users and a predominance of tweets with their own content over retweets. The dissemination of other people's content was used almost entirely to promote the candidate's political party and, to a lesser extent, to interact with journalists. Dialogue with citizens was almost always residual, both in retweets and in responses. This utilitarian conception of the microblogging network was accompanied by a polarizing thematic selection, with an almost general preponderance of political issues over policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological transformations and, especially, the accelerated process of digitalization have changed the profiles and production routines of the media. At the same time, universities have had to adapt their journalism curricula to new training needs. This paper analyzes the evolution of the technical-digital training of the journalism degree in Spain over the last two decades through a comparative study of three stages: before, during, and after the adaptation to the EHEA (2000-2010-2020). The research brings together, as valuable reference material, the curricular offerings of 112 programs and 242 subjects that show the educational evolution of the digital environment over the last 20 years, with a longitudinal and epistemological approach. The trends identified by this diagnostic work confirm, among other aspects, how the design of journalism curricula has evolved at a slow and asynchronous pace in digital training until the last decade and with disparate speeds between universities. Added to this is the conformation of a highly varied epistemological heritage that, beyond the specific names of the subjects, denotes a progressive commitment to digital and multimedia teaching, combining generic hybrid knowledge with more specialized training in terms of languages and formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication studies in Spain have now become consolidated based on their evolution over the last 50 years. The aim of this paper is to provide an in-depth analysis of the current state of Spanish higher education in Communication. To this end, an analysis is carried out of the structure and composition of the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees (master and PhD studies) in Communication at public and private universities in Spain, paying special attention to the centers that host these studies, the people who contribute to their operation, and their offerings and distribution. Using a descriptive methodology and the content analysis technique, an analysis form is applied to the universities composing the system of Communication studies in Spain, based on their offerings and the information available and accessible on their institutional websites. The results reveal the difficulty of accessing such data and the lack of common criteria (or compliance) for presenting such information on official websites. The results reveal a greater offering at the national level but a wide dispersion of the higher education offering in terms of type, location, type of university, and territorial distribution. We also highlight the gender gap in terms of faculty leadership as well as among teaching staff. We emphasize the phenomenon of double or combined degrees, especially at private universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to public information (that generated by public institutions) is a right recognized by both European (Unión Europea, 2001) and Spanish legislation (España, 1992; 1997; 2013). The bodies of the Spanish State must to make available to the citizens, free of charge and in a transparent way, all the documents that they generate, unless there are national security reasons. Many national, regional and local governments have created information systems or public information platforms in the form of newsletters or gazettes. The purpose of this paper is to find out how is, on a documentary level, the main informative gazette of Spain, the Boletín oficial del Estado (BOE). The metadata of the published documents are studied and the metadata used for documentary description are analyzed in a deeper way. The results reflect the absence of documentary descriptors in more than 89% of the total documentary BOE' corpus. In recent years this figure has barely exceeded 50%. The paper ends with a few recommendations for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public administrations publish open data for later reuse by citizens. Besides the obvious impact on transparency, they have an important economic potential which explains the increasing adoption of this type of initiatives. There is an increasing number of administrations that decide to create open data portals, a tendency that municipalities have followed. Few empirical papers have assessed this type of portals and the analyses have been mainly qualitative or limited to a reduced number of portals, so there are no generally accepted criteria for the assessment of their implementation. The main contribution of this paper is the definition of a method to analyse open data portals and its application to a sample of municipalities of Spain, a country at the forefront of data re-utilization in Europe. Furthermore, the economic- financial information available in these portals is analysed, as it is essential to accountability, fight corruption and evaluate the financial sustainability and effectiveness of public service delivery. Results show that there is much room for improvement in this field. Only 40% of the cities analysed have an open data portal, and the average score of the sample analysed does not reach 50%. Most portals seem to work as mere data repositories, neglecting those aspects that promote data use by the non-expert public, accountability, citizen engagement and the quality of the data being disclosed (e.g., definition of the metadata used). So, the paper concludes with some recommendations for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High technology has been one of the main assets used by the media around the world to stand out from the masses and reach an increasingly fragmented audience, including drone journalism, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. In this regard, the mid-2010s saw a whole phase of experimentation that began with so-called immersive journalism, a new way of producing news content using virtual reality and 360° video, which introduced various novelties in the way stories are both told and consumed/watched. Among these, 360° real-image videos are the most common form, which can be partly explained by factors such as time and cost, although it is also possible to find completely computer-generated (CG) nonfiction experiences. Legacy media such as The New York Times, El País, or the BBC have been experimenting with the possibilities of this immersive storytelling, but what about digital native media? The aim of this paper is to explore the use of 360° video by Spanish digital native media in order to observe the degree of development of immersive storytelling, as well as the quality of the pieces available more than 5 years after the start of this phenomenon known as immersive journalism. For this purpose, a content analysis of 360° videos published during the period 2015-2019 by El español, eldiario.es, El independiente, and El HuffPost has been carried out. The study of these particular cases reveals the absence of a narrative strategy aligned with the immersive format; in general, these are simple videos that provide little added value compared with the conventional format. Furthermore, the results show that the history of immersive journalism by these cybermedia has been limited in terms of both volume and time, with little guarantee that it will continue into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid adoption of social media by public administrations deserves attention from the side of institutional information and communication. One of the points recently identified is the tone used by public sector organizations to deliver their messages, as it may encourage citizen collaboration and participation. This paper explores the tone that Spanish city councils with more than 50,000 inhabitants are using in their social media profiles. This paper is based in two research questions: (a) What is the general tone used by the city councils in their use of social media?; (b) What explanatory factors are behind the adoption of one tone or another? Studying Twitter through big data techniques and statistical analysis, this study finds a positive general communicative tone. Traditional organizational, institutional and environmental factors do not seem to have a statistical significant influence over the tone. This article concludes with proposals for improvement on future research derived from the research results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the information coverage by the Spanish newspapers El país, El mundo, ABC, and La vanguardia in Twitter on the electoral campaign prior to the 10 November 2019 general elections. A content analysis of all tweets published by these media regarding the elections (n = 1,462) between Friday 1 and Saturday 9 November reveals that, although there are differences in the production patterns and features of the messages, the subject received notable attention in all the newspapers. The coverage gravitated around two main themes: the 4N electoral debate, and campaign events. The results reveal that, although most of the tweets had a neutral tone, messages with clear positioning corresponding to the editorial line of the newspaper were also published, albeit to a lesser extent. During the electoral period, the media agenda revolved around this issue, accounting for around one-fifth of all pieces published on Twitter. Newspapers do not take advantage of the dialogic nature or possibilities offered by this social network to create a community among their readers, limiting themselves to the dissemination of content from their digital edition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral dissertations enable the transfer of research skills and capacities to future generations and the consolidation of lines of research in a given area of knowledge. The field of Library and Information Science in public universities in Spain is characterized by the supervision of doctoral theses by academics in the area. We identified active professors during the 2019-2020 academic year, their date of appointment as civil servants within the public university system, the dissertations that they supervised, and their participation in papers published in scientific journals. The analysis included 644 theses. About a quarter (23%) of university faculty have never supervised a doctoral thesis, and most faculty members and tenured professors (60%) show a lower than average rate of adviserships per year since their academic appointment. There is a high concentration of PhD advisers in just a few institutions and academics (8% of university professors have supervised 42% of the dissertations), with an important gender imbalance: women supervised an average of 1.8 dissertations, compared with 2.6 for men. Information units and services, study metrics and scientific publications, and information sources are the topics of 47% of the dissertations. Many of the professors with 10 or more adviserships (n/N = 12/18) lack a subject area specialization, and their role in PhD supervision was not related to their participation in research activities oriented toward publishing in scientific journals. Our results suggest that considering supervision of doctoral theses as an important academic merit could contribute to a further concentration of power and social capital among a small group of advisers. This phenomenon could reduce the plurality of topics addressed and favor suboptimal adviserships. The imbalances described emerge as another threat, exacerbating the epistemological crisis in the discipline and in the university studies in this area of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish university libraries have had to adapt their services to the virtual environment after the classroom-based teaching lockdown in March 2020 due to Covid-19. Given the possibility of a greater virtual dimension of learning and teaching during the next academic year, these library services should be improved. This paper analyzes how university libraries are strengthening their support for online learning and are progressively being integrated into the virtual campus, as well as the actions that are necessary to enhance these services and the main difficulties perceived by their librarians. For this purpose, a sample of professionals from university libraries was interviewed, and the research literature on this subject was also reviewed to identify the main international experiences that can be considered as benchmarks for improving virtual library services. Both the research literature and the librarians interviewed agree on two aspects: the need to increase collaboration with other university departments and the wide scope for improvement in the integration of the library into online learning, which is currently limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the news on Covid-19 and 2019-nCoV in the Spanish media. This is done by using news retrieved from My news database. The analysis includes the total amount of news in Spanish media by type of media; the evolution of the publication in digital media considering various periods of time, and the volume of news in the most used Spanish digital media. The results show that digital media are the most used among other types to publish on the topic, with a significant increase since the beginning of the alarm state. In this sense, some arguments on the function and utility of this type of media during the confinement are exposed. Also, the essential role of digital media covering the population’s information needs is discussed. The digital media with the largest number publications are abc.es, 20minutos. es, and elconfidencial.com. The value of this work is that it can serve as starting point for others in order to carry out content analysis on the subject considering different channels and digital media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To know the perceived and real difficulties of the company in Spain in relation to the implementation of R+D+i by the Spanish business, we start from the vision that employees have about the ease or difficulty of their companies at the time of doing research and development and therefore, innovation. In this paper we analyze the highlights of the survey prepared under the auspices of the "Scientific Culture Research Project: perception and attitudes towards science and innovation in the Spanish business sector" funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. The results obtained advance that education and the promotion of an innovative attitude are the basis for achieving a successful business development since innovation is one of the key pillars of the maintenance and survival of companies today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient relationship between the Armed Forces, the media and the public opinion is crucial for an effective elaboration of security and defense policies. Despite there are available multiple researches about media and national defense, studies focused on the Armed Forces are practically non existent in Spain. The present research tries to deepen in the media frames used by the Spanish press when dealing with the armed forces. From a comparative analysis of two periods of time, this paper brings new data to this academic field about the treatment of women in the Armed Forces as a modernizing element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), effective in Spain since the 2008-2009 academic year, raised the need for universities to actively commit to employability, but the study of the work trajectory of the new graduates has been practically unattended in Spain. In this paper we analyze the employment details in the three years after graduation of the graduates from the communication programs who finished their studies at the Rey Juan Carlos University (Madrid) between the academic years 2012-13 and 2015-16. Employment period of the analyzed cohorts takes place between 2014 and 2017. The results indicate a deep deterioration of the labor market in the communication sector in 2014, when only 30% of the recent graduates had an occupation according to their training profile one year after graduation. Employment in the sector has been recovering since 2015. In the years following, around 50% of graduates accessed the specific labor market after one year, and specific employment reached almost 70% in the third year after graduation. However, even relying on the stability of their jobs, recent graduates see few options for improvement and professional growth in the communication sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses an aspect not yet investigated in Spanish political communication: the use of data mining systems and machine learning in the construction of political discourse. This text details the potential of Calisto software, which was designed and implemented by the Popular Party (PP), previously used in Castile and Leon and then at the national level. This software acts as a digital political advisor and is currently used by 7,500 positions and party members. The program tracks information on the internet to identify the most relevant sources. In addition, its natural language processing generates ideas and arguments that politicians use to construct their speech. This article explores the benefits of this tool and its ability to automate processes that previously consumed large doses of effort by managers and consultants, and also reflects on the highly controlled model that this type of system imposes in the public arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration and its regulation are key issues in society and, as such, are subject to political discourses that show the arguments of the different social actors, especially political parties. Press is one of the main mechanisms used by these social actors to show such discourses. Hence, this paper analyzes how six Spanish newspapers presented the political discourses on the Foreigners law, as the main legal-political instrument to manage immigration, from 2003 to 2016, as well as the position of the political parties that were the main sources of discourse. To achieve this, we worked with the Zapata-Barrero model, which categorizes political discourses on immigration into two types: pro-active discourses and re-active discourses, which shows their preference for managing multiculturalism as a challenge or a problem, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explain how the libraries in Sciences, Medicine, and Health Sciences at the University of Alcalá (UAH), Spain, have implemented information literacy (IL) in courses from 2010-2011 to 2015-2016, usually as part of the curriculum, including them in most teaching guides. This article discusses the strategy followed, the information available to achieve teacher collaboration, the opportunities offered by the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the background data, the way IL has been gradually incorporated in various studies, and finally, the obvious advantages in the learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the products of Thomson-Reuters is the list of highly cited researchers, which became more important when it was incorporated into the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities. Scores on the Shanghai Ranking HiCi indicator are related to the number of highly cited researchers (HCR) by university. In the 2013 edition, methodological changes have been made in listing highly cited authors. The main aim of this paper is to analyze these changes and the new HCR distribution by country. The paper also lists the new HCR from Spain. At the national level, Spain increased its global representation to 2.52% and at the institutional level 23 universities are scored on the HiCi indicator, helping to configure a new map of research excellence. The paper concludes with a preliminary assessment of the impact of the new lists on the position of Spain's universities in the Shanghai ranking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practices for free digital content downloads in the publishing industry are referred to as a problem by cultural and business leaders worldwide. The creation of systems to protect the files, the emergence of national and international agencies to monitor illegal downloads, and the publishing industry's reluctance to abandon the paper and embrace the digital formats, provide the context for a practice that is little studied when it comes to books. The aim of this paper is to analyze the conditions under which it occurs in Spain, examining the legal provision of content, and the availability of works in p2p networks and blogs. The hypothesis is that in the book arena, the content downloads do not have the relevance and scale they possess in music or film, and that in large part they are motivated by the lack of a legal offering that is varied and up-to-date, and by deficiencies in the sales and distribution platforms. The presence of the bestselling books in major sales platforms and in different file sharing networks is analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community management has emerged as a new profession since the advent of web 2.0. Professional positions and functions have been consolidated and standardized within corporate communication; consequently, many organizations hire community management services or agencies. This paper discusses the roles of the professionals who are responsible for community management in Spanish advertising and public relations agencies. A survey identified the typical profile of a professional in this field: a woman, aged 25-35 years, journalism degree, with two to three years previous digital media experience. In other words, a young professional with a CV linked to the world of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift of radio listeners from radios to smartphones has expanded the communicative potential of the broadcasters due to the characteristics of this new distribution platform. The convergence of content and communication on the smartphone screen gives radio stations the opportunity to enrich their multimedia messages, explore new ways of distribution and achieve advances in customization of the medium. The connectivity of these devices and location technologies also multiply the potential for local information, enabling a contextualized experience. This paper aims to analyse the adaptation of talk radio stations in Spain and Portugal to the radioapps from a content perspective and also to assess the possibilities of customizing access and consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish research in Documentation (or Library and Information Science, LIS) began to stand out in the 1980s, in parallel with the creation of university studies in Library and Information Science, and it increased its activity significantly until the year 2000. In this period, research in Documentation was oriented to disseminate rather than innovate, and also had a low international impact, shortage of economic and human resources, and poor methodological quality. In the first 20 years of the 21st century, we have witnessed an outstanding growth and diversification of this research activity, which has led to the overcoming of most of the problems mentioned before. The objective of the text is to present a general overview of the development of Documentation research in Spain in the last 20 years based on the analysis of five fundamental aspects: publications (articles and monographs), topics and methodologies, scientific journals, research projects and doctoral theses. General descriptive data from public statistical sources and comments from a bibliographic review are provided for each of them. As a conclusion, a very positive global balance of Spanish research in Documentation in the last 20 years stands out, not only a quantitative increase (in publications, theses, research projects, etc.) but also a qualitative improvement in the use of research methods and techniques, as well as a diversification of the research topics. In any case, internationalization (collaboration with foreign authors) and the presentation of international projects could be improved. Finally, there is a risk in near future related to aging and the absence of generational renewal of the research staff that can will slow down this growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing number of open data initiatives that allow citizens to reuse public data sets through specifically designed applications. This paper presents an overview of these initiatives and their development in Spain, analyzing the open data sets available and the functions and features of the applications developed for this purpose. The information source used in this work is the portal http://datos.gob.es, of national scope which organizes and manages the public information catalog of Spanish administrations. This source offers information about these data sets and the applications and utilities developed. The analysis shows a diverse distribution of these open data sets that requires grouping by metacategories for its study and analysis. The level of development of the applications seems low but it may be due to the incipience on freely available data. In any case, the data sets related to infrastructures (especially transports) appear to be the main object of the applications developed so far in Spain in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libraries in Spain, like other institutions, have been affected by the economic crisis. The effects and their consequences are studied in this paper, based on available library statistics. A significant decrease in expenditure for materials, the downgrading of collections, library closures and a growing increase in usage were observed in 2012. Changes in content consumption habits are also highlighted, with special attention to adaptations to digital change. Facts 2012: the operating costs of Spanish libraries amounted to 990.1 million euros (+0.54% compared to 2010); if the increase in the CPI is taken into account, the cost increase is actually 5%. Personnel expenses represent 66.9%. Public libraries (PLs) reported 594 fewer employees than in 2010 and there were 154 fewer in academic libraries (-5.6% and -2.6%, respectively). The PLs incorporated 3.5 million volumes (-31.2% compared to 2010). Visits to libraries: Total 216.4 million (in PLs +20.5% / 2010); 401 libraries (20%) did not have computers for public use and 46.5% had no opac yet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the basic duties of scientific journals is the evaluation of the papers that they publish. The most common practice is peer review, in which several experts determine the reliability of the ideas and results as well as the potential impact on science. Studying the documentation provided by the editors of Quality Assessment of Spanish Scientific Journals, 1st Edition, in 2008, we have analyzed some of the editorial practices in the evaluation process, such as external evaluation, instructions to referees, the existence of protocols to evaluate the articles and anonymity of those involved in the review. The significance of our work is that the evaluation process has been checked independently of what is stated in the journal. We have verified that there is a lack of standardization in the evaluation process, which is symptomatic of the need for deeper professionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internet is transforming the business model of the press. Free access to online news, increased competition and the crisis of the media sector has reopened the debate on the future of newspapers in the convergence era. The object of this paper it is to examine the basis of the new business models of the press on the Net. The analysis addresses the revenue sources for online information: advertising and sale of the product. The methodology is the case study, applied to the business strategies of four Spanish digital newspapers: the online versions of two main newspapers (Elpaís.com and Elmundo. es) and two pure digital players (Soitu and Factual). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rector Gabriel Ferraté Library (BRGF) at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) has recently launched an electronic books lending service. This paper describes the experience of evaluating the e-book readers in the current market, the content to be made available on these devices, and how well they actually work, as well as the results of 2 months of ongoing service. Finally, it points to short-term future actions with all four copies of iRex iLiad 2nd Edition available in the library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state of the Spanish LIS profession and specialities in 2002 is reviewed. Statistical data is provided about both the number and type of Spanish libraries and archives as well as of practising professionals, according to geographic distribution, training and job description. Spanish library and information authorities are identified as well as professional associations and learned societies and conferences held. University education is also examined with descriptions of existing institutions, degree levels and data on student enrolment and teachers. The primary media for professional communication are described, in particular publishers, bulletins, scientific journals and electronic fora. Publishing output is quantified: books, journal articles, and conference papers both at national and international levels. Finally, research in the field is analysed through the total of Ph. D. dissertations presented, research articles published and research projects funded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]