INFOBILA: A regional repository to support LIS education and research in Latin America

The need of having access to publications in Library and Information Science (LIS) generated in Latin America, has been present at the Institute of Research on Library Science and Information [Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliotecológicas y de la Información, IIBI] of the National Autonomous University of Mexico [Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM], since its creation in 1981 like University Center of Research in Library Science [Centro Universitario de Investigaciones Bibliotecológicas, CUIB]. This fact was the reason to build INFOBILA (Información Bibliotecológica Latinoamericana [LatinAmerican Library Science Information), a database that compiles, disseminates and accesses the LIS literature published in Latin America. On the other hand, technology has today facilitated the creation of institutional repositories and IIBI could not ignore this new model of scientific communication and dissemination of academic publications, therefore, it developed an Open Access (OA) institutional repository that includes more than 2,000 publications of different types (books, book chapters, articles, published papers and theses and dissertations). This repository opens the possibility for INFOBILA to evolve from a database with bibliographic information, to a LIS regional repository. Taking into consideration all the above mentioned, the objective of this document is to show the antecedents and main characteristics of this project, as well as its impact on LIS education and research in Latin America.