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Diplomat, Egyptologist, writer and historian, Eduard Toda is remembered as the man who rescued the Algherese dialect of Catalan from oblivion and who helped rebuild the monastery libraries of Escornalbou and Poblet. On the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of his death, this paper reviews Toda’s book collecting activities, his general love of books and his outstanding work as a benefactor of libraries, which together contributed to enriching our country’s book heritage. The paper then turns to Toda’s relationship with the school for librarians the Escola de Bibliotecàries, which was founded thanks to his donation of a number of book collections to the Library of Catalonia. As recorded in the archives of the old Escola, this relationship was based on a number of different activities: Toda’s trips to Escornalbou, which also provided an opportunity for cultural study; his organization of periods of residence for student librarians at Poblet to help rebuild the monastery’s library; his creation of classes in book restoration in degree courses in librarianship; and the creation of a workshop for restoring library materials, which for many decades helped to link the Escola and the Library of Catalonia. Finally, as the article shows, Toda’s ties with the Escola de Bibliotecàries were reinforced by the mutual affection existing between him and the school as well as by the activities he organized with its students, which gave the school its singular nature as a place of study during the 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is a review of Pasión por la historia antigua. De Gibbon a nuestros días, a collective book edited by A. Duplá, Ch. Núñez y G. Reimond. I present each chapter of it, dedicated to a distinguished figure in the historiography of ancient history from the eighteenth century to the present days. I propose a series of reflections for each one of them and for the book as a hole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is aimed, firstly, at suggesting the need for in-training Primary Education Teachers to build up general knowledge about science structuring contents as well as history of science from a gender perspective. This training in science should help students to analyse the relationships between science-technology and gendersociety throughout history and at present. Secondly, a qualitative research carried out about a proposal developed by Science Didactics students of the Degree in Primary Education in the University of Granada about biographies of female scientists is described. Finally, the results of the research are presented, all leading to some key ideas on how to introduce the gender approach in the teaching of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the new forms of organizing the social sphere from the key of hybridization. The object of analysis is placed on the interrelationship between the public and private sphere in the context of biographic narratives. The paper specifically focuses on the movement of public to private and the resulting transformations, putting forward two conflicting interpretations called: spectacularization and politicization. In the course of the paper an ad hoc survey of blogs is taken as a starting point and a corpus of selected personal blog is semiotically analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the ideological discourse of the local print and television news media of the eighties in the city of Monterrey, Mexico according to the biographical narratives of four leading journalists. The purpose is to pay attention to the role of ideology in the media as emphasized by cultural studies in its beginnings. The main question posed was: What was the role of the media in the eighties in the reproduction of the ideology of the economic and industrial elite of Monterrey and its relationship with the value system and civic identity of the audience members? According to the journalists interviewed, members of the industrial elite had a direct and explicit influence in the policies and contents of the main local newspapers and television stations, except for a daily newspaper that lost its predominance when rejecting that influence. The paper discusses the close relationship between media, audiences and the structures of ideological reproduction of the local industrial group, and the ways in which all these elements continously interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For millennia the turtles and tortoises have been part of the mythical universe of several human cultures. In consequence, the empirical knowledge of oral transmission, the contextualized use, and the symbolic meaning of these animals exceed in antiquity and extension to the academic knowledge on them, which has not impeded, however, that chelonians are currently the most threatened vertebrates on the Earth. This paper deals with the work of explorers and naturalists who laid the foundations of the South American herpetology, in general, and the cheloniology, in particular, with emphasis in Argentina. The work of Marcos Freiberg is recognized as pivotal to the development of the scientific study of the chelonians in this country. Lastly, the progress of cheloniology in recent decades is summarized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the biography of Porfirio Barba Jacob for enquiring into the decadent and melancholic Latin-American dandy of the end of the XIX century that this poet was and into the actual dandy image of Fernando Vallejo. I attempt to understand the work Barba Jacob el Mensajero in relation to Vallejo's works La rambla paralela and Chapolas negras to look into the story of own's and someone else's life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on the professional biographies of six professors identified as excellent by senior students in three programmes at the School of Humanities, Mar del Plata State University. In-depth interviews examined the teachings and practices these instructors encountered along their educational biographies in order to find traces of these experiences in their current lives. The aim is to disclose the subtle ways in which the past influences their academic present. The life histories retrieved reveal the importance of the actors' mentors at the onset of their teaching and research at the university. The recovery of these memories allows the conceptualization of experts' role in the education of novices, thus examining what is traditionally considered as the informal supervision of teaching assistants and junior researchers. In this way, we try to create a site at the university where it is possible to discuss mentors' good practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biography of news researcher Liz Donovan, who died in 2008, serves as a thread of a journey through the profession of news librarian and describes the evolution of newspaper newsrooms throughout 40 years. Information systems and resources have changed -from paper clippings to the Internet and Web 2.0-, but the economic situation of the press has also changed, leading to cutbacks. Unfortunately, with the mistaken idea that "everything is on the Internet", news companies are devaluing the contributions made by information professionals to newspaper content, and often close or decimate the news libraries, thus losing an important amount of know-how and quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with historical memory. It analyzes specifically the conditions for the creation of both a generational and national collective memory. Based on transnational research carried out in 2004 in Argentina and Switzerland for which men and women from five quinquennial groups were interviewed, this work focuses on the results for Argentina. The following questions guided the research on the historical content of memories: What is the building process of a generational historical memory like? Can we find a common, transgenerational memory that could be labeled as national? Can a national memory coexist with generational memories? Thus, the research goals are, on the one hand, to trace the contours of the historical dimension in collective memory and its generational differences. And second, to describe the ways in which personal biography, societal changes, and individual perception of facts coalesce. This research was based on two tenets: a generation's collective historical memory starts taking shaping during teenage and youth, and a generation's historical memory is a subjective process of memory building developed over the course of a lifetime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, Gonzalo Cataño examines the ideas on the State defended by the notable thinker and Colombian socialist leader: Gerardo Molina. The article presents a brief biography, followed by a study of his ideas concerning the functions of the State. Although a critical tone predominates all way through the article, it must be remembered that the limitations of an intelligent analyst of the public subjects are always more instructive than the correct considerations of a trivial expositor of the policy. The paper defines Provident State -- also known as Welfare State or Supportive State-- as a State that guarantees minimum standards of income, health, food, housing, education and labor, as political rights, not charity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Use of biography and life histories in the social sciences is associated with the re-valorization of the subject as the object of study in contrast with the positivist position which, while associated epistemologically with the natural sciences, gave priority to quantitative matter and the social structure over and above the subject. This paper proposes the need to leave aside the "traditional" research of a quantitative nature and articulate a qualitative research strategy, but one that is articulated with a qualitative research strategy strongly balanced and utilized in the analysis and comprehension of social phenomenon and understood from the point of view of its causes and effects. More specifically, the objective of this contribution in responding to the challenge of qualitative methods, is to demonstrate the great methodological efficacy and the creativity of a synergic and complementary encounter between what is generically called "Biographic approximation" and "Grounded theory", and secondly to determine the possible fecundity in quasiquantitative studies of new forms of occupational and social insertion using large quantitative data bases. This is a follow-up on the development of research undertake in 1999 and 2002 as to the insertion of the technically formed population utilizing this integrated methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]