I Seminar of Environmental Documentation Centers and Protected Natural Areas

  • Names

    Naturgune Babestu Eta Ingurumeneko Dokumentazio-Zentroen I. Mintegia
    I Seminario de Centros de Documentación Ambiental e Espazos Naturais Protexidos
    I Seminari de Centres de Documentació Ambiental i D'Espais Naturals Protegits

  • Place and date

    National Environmental Education Center, Valsaín (Segovia), from 6 to 8 March 2002

  • Coordination

    Rosario Toril. Documentation Center of CENEAM.
    Montserrat Grabolosa. Documentation Center of the Natural Park from Zona Volcánica of Garrotxa. General Directorate of Natural Heritage and Physical Environment. Environment Department of the Generalitat of Catalonia.

  • Introduction

    This seminar held in CENEAM (Valsaín, Segovia). It was also organized by CENEAM and Ministerio del Medio Ambiente (Environmental Ministry), with the collaboration of Dirección General de Patrimonio Natural y Medio Físico del Departamento de Medio Ambiente de la Generalidad de Cataluña (General Management of Natural Patrimony from Environment Department of the Generalitat of Catalonia).

    The idea of organizing this seminar appeared with a questionnaire that Centro de Documentación of CENEAM. They sent it in 1988 to the Centros españoles de Documentación Ambiental (Spanish Centers of Environmental Documentation) to make a Board of this kind of Center. This work will ease the labor of experts and users. With this work, it became clear:

    • Discoordination between the Centers.
    • Acknowledge their funds and services.
    • The appreciable increase of environmental information and its diffusion (sometimes via non-commercial channels), which difficults its access.
       

    This first idea got stronger through similar work in the field of protected spaces carried out by the Documentary Center of the Garrotxa Natural Park.

    The objectives which this meeting followed were as follows:

    • To promote a coordination network, which allows experience exchange, information, and documentation. Moreover, Centers also wanted to make collaborations possible in projects.
    • To see the fact situation of Documentary Centers. The personal knowledge and the possibility to see what can be in each information sector. Their purpose was to open the possibilities to future collaborations.
    • To provide tools to improve the management of a Documentation Center from a naturally protected and-or environmental. Concerning the information and documentation— management of resources, documents, new technologies, quality systems, and others.
       

    The participants were experts who focused on the management of Documentation Center, specialized on the environment and-or natural protected places. In the Selection process, an attempt was made to include as many Autonomous Communities as possible. However, it is true that some Communities are appreciated a mayor consolidation. We can find several Centers with good funds and abundan services, such as Catalonia and Madrid; and we can also observe in other Communities either there is no information unit in environmental area— or they have neither the means nor the personal to carry it out. In this first seminar, we tried Centers comes from Public Administration. Their purpose was to make the collaborations easier and because, in general, public centers are better equipped than privates (that means that public center are more generous with their sources).

    To a large extent, the contents of this seminar were:
     

    • Management and organization of information
    • Spanish and European helps
    • Quality systems

  • Presentations

    The contents of the seminar are dealt with both in the debates and working groups and in the papers presented, which were as follows:

    In terms of experiences, some of them were:

    - Information and document management

    - Coordination experiences of Documentation Centers

    • DOCUPARC, represented by Junta de Andalucía and Parque Natural de la Garrotxa. 
    • Documento Marco ENP de Cataluña. It is a document agreed upon by more than twenty ENPC DCs and also environmental DCs belonging to different administrations, with different interests... and they have agreed to establish the basic lines, the general characteristics of what is necessary and how their DCs should be.
       

    - Experiencias de implantación de la ISO 9002 de calidad

  • Suggestions and obligations

    Some of the suggestions and obligations adopted are:

    1. To create a distribution list in Red Iris, which works as an exchange and diffusion forum. This list is already managed and is defined as CDENPMA (Documentary Centers of Natural Protected Spaces and Environment). Is controlled by Javier Puertas from  Europarc Spain and the interested center can subscribe, using the following link http://www.rediris.es/list/select-iris.phtml?string=documentacion
    2. To know more in-depth about what is done in each Center, so we commit ourselves to complete a sheet with all the data of each Documentation Centre—we take as a reference the sheet handed out to us. In there, we have questions, such as what to keep in mind to manage a Documentation Center. A few hints, for all the participants to fill in.
    3. Exchanging commitment publications which are edited in different entities, as much as possible.
    4. It suggests that CENEAM should organize more formative courses related to  Documentation Centers
    5. As a middle-large period objective— the possibility of making a publication about good practices in Centros de Documentación, also the most common questions and answers and contact lists to use as information resources.
    6. It is decided to take part in the priority actions of Plan de acción de los Espacios Naturales Protegidos which relates to environmental information diffusion, also supports investigating and training professionals of Documentation Centers of ENP (Natural Protected Spaces)/MA.
    7. No specific agreement has been reached in matters of the request for European and Spanish aid, although some ideas and possibilities have been considered—protect to digitize image collections, grey literature, and others. It is suggested that, in case a member of the group wants to make a project with statal or European funding, the member should tell the project of the rest. Reyes Boralla (Junta de Andalucía) is about to present the DOCUPARC project and will inform us of its progress and outcome.
    8. To know and participate in European projects, all Documentation Centers are suggested to join the CORDIS list where they collect your data, type of center, topics of interest, and other essential aspects.
    9. In terms of quality, and after seeing the scarce experience of our CDs, it proposed that any member (that will carry out any management of the quality system) should communicate it to the rest of the team.
    10. Several actions are proposed to disseminate the Seminar— from the possibility of written publication of the proceedings, papers, etc. To the dissemination through the web of the main contents (also translated into Catalan and Basque).
    11. The coordinators of this Seminar propose that, for subsequent years, the material related to the debates, SWOT, and discussions... should be available before the event to those who can prepare their interventions in advance.
       

    For any additional information, please, contact the Centro de Documentación de CENEAM - Correo-e: bib.ceneam@oapn.es

    Catalan version - Correo-e: wgrabolo@gencat.cat

Accesos Directos