The Virtual Health Library of Spain: a tool to access and disseminate scientific and technical knowledge on health.

The project “Virtual Health Library” [http://bvs.isciii.es] is the result of technical cooperation between the Pan American Health Organization of the World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) through its Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information, previously called Regional Library of Medicine (BIREME), [http://www. bireme.br], and other national and regional institutions of Latin America and the Caribbean. Each participant country, through its Coordinator Centre, develops its own VHL and all of them belong to the VHL network, coordinated by BIREME. The Spanish National Library of Health Sciences (Biblioteca Nacional de Ciencias de la Salud, BNCS) from Carlos III Health Institute (Instituto de Salud Carlos III, ISCIII, http://www.isciii.es), is the Coordinator Centre responsible for developing the Virtual Health Library in Spain. One of the added values of these libraries is the quality of the available information. All sources are selected following strict quality criteria. Another characteristic is that all Virtual Health Libraries use the same interface and search engines to enhance their navigability. The Virtual Health Library (VHL) could be defined as a tool to disseminate scientific and technical knowledge on health through the Internet. Its main aim is to promote the development and dissemination of scientific information sources to be used by Governments, national health systems, research and educational institutions, health workers and anyone who may need this type of information. It gathers, in one website, different types of information resources on health. In addition, it guarantees the reliability, updating and quality of the information and it also provides universal access to this information through the Internet [2]. To date, the Virtual Health Libraries Network is made up by 8 national VHLs (they gather and disseminate the scientific production generated in the country), 9 specific VHLs (they develop sources that gather the knowledge on a given scientific field), 37 national initiatives (under development) and 13 regional initiatives (under development; they make up tools of several Latin-American and Caribbean countries). VHL-Spain offers free access to: National Databases (IBECS y BDIE), international databases (Medline, LILACS, PAHO), collective catalogues (SeCS and C17), Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO)-Spain and Net-SciELO® electronic publications, health terminology databases: (MeSH-DeCS, Health Sciences Descriptors), health information locators (LIS-Spain: Healthy Sites), directories and other information resources, links to different VHLs by countries or thematic areas, and publications released by VHL-Spain Cristina Fraga-Medín* Virginia Jiménez-Planet Laura Mohedano-Macías Jorge Veiga de Cabo