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The first activity, which should be regularly updated, is library planning. This includes analysing the information needs of potential users and of those existing libraries in the area of knowledge so as to create cooperative programmes. It also includes a declaration of the centre’s objective, the processes and services to be provided, a listing of all the resources and space necessary for the staff, collections, services and technology. A librarian should be able to identify the pertinent information sources to find, evaluate, select and acquire those publications that meet the needs of the users and are most appropriate to the institutions served by the library. Magazines and e-books have a growing presence in them, and for this reason libraries are more and more focussed on reference and documentary databases, both of which constitute the so-called ‘invisible internet’, containing subscription agencies and ‘value-added’ content companies which facilitate access to saleable digital documents. Due to the continuous growth in price and decrease in budgets, the librarian has to evaluate the library’s participation in cooperative acquisition projects complemented by those projects dedicated to providing documents to those libraries associated with the consortium or network. As the bibliographic material arrives, the librarian should carry out a series of tests (matching the requested title, checking the physical state, medium, format, adherence to intellectual property laws, and so on), library operations and administrative economies. Once carried out, they move on to editing the library registers or descriptive and / or authoritative metadata following international standards to ensure their quality. The independence of the data of the IT programmes used and the participation in library consortiums help to spread the cost of creating them and allow users access to the network’s bibliographical content. Authority metadata guarantees the uniformity of authors’ denominations, the designation of the documents’ subjects and the existing relationships between the topics, as well as the identity of the titles. The aim of this activity is to facilitate information recovery. The next job is to assign a physical location to the object (books, journal, engraving, drawing, CD, etc.) within either the virtual or real repository. A URL, electronic address or topographic signature all share the same aim: to find, recover and provide the document required by the user. This work should be completed with a conservation policy common to both collections. The aim of this is to specify what can be got rid of, the characteristics of the relevant furniture for each type of bibliographic material of the large-scale storage units, ways of undertaking a regular cleaning of shelves and publications, the criteria to decide restoration and digitalization of those publications of special cultural or economic value. In the case of digital objects this policy must specify the creation of security copies, transferral to different formats and so on. Some of the actions to be completed and those that have been completed with each publications, together with the limitations derived from intellectual property issues can be recorded in the metadata. The tasks listed above are technical processes whose aim is to constitute and organize a collection of documents, the descriptions thereof make up the catalogue or bibliographic database. This is the nexus between users and librarians for a large part of library services. In a conventional environment, or in a hybrid library, made up of printed and digital objects, the usual services are guidance on how the centre works, the provision of existing bibliographic information on both internal and external resources, document consultation in reading rooms, home lending, inter-library lending of publications or partial publications non-existent in the library the user is a member of, organization of cultural activities (exhibitions, conferences, story time, etc), user information and information alphabetization. Today’s digital environment and telecommunications networks, especially the internet, have influenced in more ways than one how technical processes and user service provision are carried out more than the tasks themselves. Libraries in developed countries are seeing reader attendance slump because of the ongoing digitalization of hand-written and printed documents, the increasing rate of directly-created digital objects in the public domain and home- or work-based terminals (computers, tablets, smartphones, etc.) that can access the publications. The users access the publications and, provided legal conditions permit such actions, download them to the memory systems. Moreover, they can connect directly to the librarians for consultations or suggestions for acquisitions. The users can contact each other directly through the libraries social networks to various ends. Another case is the possibility of using virtual library services 24/7 from around the globe, and if the library participates in a national or international collaborative network and of accessing the collections of all the participating institutions. Let us remember that centres of memory are part of these projects; archives, libraries and museums, which all provide access to documents, publications, drawings, engravings, paintings and so on. Yet reality is not synchronic i.e. not all countries are equally developed, and not even within a country does everyone have a similar level of education or even the means necessary to access these resources available on the net. However, libraries and their librarians are there to avoid these inequalities and to help every person have their educational, cultural, and social rights fulfilled. Luis Ángel García Melero Luis Ángel García Melero comes from a line of Spanish librarians from 1915 onwards, which has allowed him to oversee the evolution of education, culture, the publishing sector and consequently, Spanish libraries for almost 100 years. His grandfather, Justo García Soriano (Orihuela, Alicante, 1884 – Madrid, 1949) was a clear supporter of the concept of research librarian and García Melero belongs to the generation of technology librarians. He has been a librarian in private collections, in the Spanish National Library, in the libraries of the Ministry of Public Administration and the Constitutional Tribunal. He is the author of several books and articles on the compilation and conservation of digital heritage, library collection management and library automatization. María Moliner (1900 – 1981). Bibliotecónoma, filóloga y lexicógrafa española/ Spanish library scientist, philologist and lexicographer. 73