Juan Bautista Iguíniz’s Contribution to professional librarianship in Mexico

This research project looks at a period spanning from 1915 to 1945 and focuses on a reexamination of the life and work of Juan Bautista Iguíñiz Vizcaíno, an early promoter of Library Science in Mexico, whose legacy is singularly relevant to any analysis of the development of Mexican libraries in the twentieth century. His professional activity carried out over a broad period finds him intimately connected to a vast array of library tasks, including operational management, integration of collections and acquisitions; curriculum design for school librarians and the founding of professional associations of Library Science specialists here and abroad. He was passionately devoted to teaching, which he considered his foremost vocation. The study of this rich epoch necessarily entails gathering a broad variety of material. The main actors in this story are the National Library, The National University and subsequent UNAM, and the Ministry of Education.