Las comunidades académicas y las redes de información en ciencias sociales en América Latina: la cooperación como estrategia de sobrevivencia y puente para el conocimiento en tiempos difíciles

Abstract

Private research centers during the authoritarian period in Latin America were constituted by NGO's where prominent sociologists, demographers, political scientists and other specialists in social sciences (who had reached prominent positions in public universities until the military dictatorships intervention during the 70s and 80s), generated knowledge and lines of research with reference to the societies of the time. These strongholds of Latin American "intelligentsia" – which could remain in the region- worked closely with libraries and documentation centers. As a result, this created a fruitful dialogue between information professionals and academics, i.e., in and with specific domains and communities of practice. The analysis of networks and information resources of the period promoted by CLACSO, DOCPAL from CELADE and CLADES from CEPAL, through theories of domain analysis and daily life information, offers vast experience and training to libraries and information services in social sciences nowadays. Information behaviors of social scientists which interrelated and inserted in the context of information and documentation services operating in regional networks, became part of a model to disseminate and discuss.