Los bibliotecarios de las bibliotecas para pacientes en España: evolución histórica de una profesión

Evolution of the professional profile of the people in charge of the hospi-tal patients' libraries in Spain through the specialized bibliography. Some character-istics have been identified pointing how is their profile actually, and how it should be. They are usually volunteers with no specific training, but when the aim is to of-fer a service of good quality and to achieve the recognition by the civil service, the hospital and also the users, a professional with specific training is required. In the beginning, the ones in charge had to have a profile according to a public li-brary librarian: regarding the collection management and the dealing with the user. Nowadays their tasks are closer to the medical libraries' librarians, especially after the Patient's Right to Information Act