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The CINDOC, History and Objectives

The Centre for Scientific Information and Documentation (Centro de Información y Documantación Científica-CINDOC) belongs to the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-CSIC). Its main aim is to analyse, disseminate and promote the scientific information in all the areas of knowledge.

OBJECTIVES

  1. To provide adequate documental support to the scientific programming of the CSIC.
  2. To undertake and develop research projects in the field of Scientific Documentation in order to:
    1. Study its relationship with the other sciences, the content of scientific information and its development.
    2. Analyse, design and develop systems, methods, tools and techniques for information processing, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information.
    3. Carry out bibliometric studies on the scientific output in different fields of knowledge.
    4. Implement terminological studies on the vocabulary used by Spanish researchers.
  3. To collect the Spanish scientific output and make it widely available by developing and distributing the corresponding databases.
  4. To provide the Spanish users with scientific information from all over the world.
  5. To promote and collaborate in training courses aimed to specialists and information users and to encourage the use of the information technologies.

HISTORY

The Information and Documentation Centre (CID) was created in 1953 as a follow-up to the activities being carried out within the General Secretariat of the Patronato "Juan de la Cierva", a branch of the Spanish National Research Council responsible for the industrial research. The so-called "Foreign Section" was responsible of compiling and organising information and making it available to the higher officials of the Patronato, as well as its research centres.

The CID formed a Bibliographic Enquiry Service and, later on, began the publication of an Index to Scientific and Technical Journals, later replaced by the Abstracts of Scientific and Technical Papers.

In the 70s, as a consequence of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) report on Spanish Information and Documentation policy, a new body was created, with the name of National Centre for Scientific Information and Documentation (Centro Nacional de Información y Documentación Científica-CENIDOC). The CENIDOC was conceived as a coordinating body, operating through three sectorial institutes, each one of them dealing with a broad field of knowledge. Under this new organization, the CID was transformed into the ICYT (Institute for Information and Documentation in Science and Technology), while two other institutes were formed from previously existing units: the Institute for Information and Documentation in Social Sciences and Humanities (ISOC) was formed from a Department of the Ministry of Culture; and the Institute for Information and Documentation in Biomedicine (IBIM) from the Medical Documentation Service of the Valencia University.

The three Institutes developed complementary activities along three basic lines: research, training and services. In 1975, both ICYT and ISOC installed terminals for on-line accessing to the main information hosts, DIALOG, QUESTEL, ORBIT, etc.

In 1976, the ISOC began to publish both the Spanish Index on Humanities and the Spanish Index on Social Sciences, while the ICYT began the publication of the Spanish Index on Science and Technology in 1979. All three indexes cover, each in its respective fields, the bibliographic references for all papers published in Spanish scientific journals, and were the foundation for the current ICYT and ISOC databases. Since 1989, these databases are available on-line, hosted by the CSIC Computer Centre. Finally, in 1990, the CSIC databases were the first bibliographic information product ever released on CD-ROM in Spain.

Finally , back in 1992 the ICYT and ISOC merged to form the new Scientific Information and Documentation Centre (CINDOC). This new Centre brings together the aims and scope of both previous institutes, to promote high level scientific information in each and every field of knowledge save medicine.