This year, BIREME Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information celebrates 35 years in its mission to contribute to the development of the health in Latin America and the Caribbean through the promotion, fortification and democratization of the scientific and technical information in health.

BIREME was established in Brazil in 1967 at the campus of then the São Paulo School of Medicine (EPM). It took care of the increasing demand to bring up to date scientific literature on the part of the Latin America and the Caribbean community of health researchers and professionals. Some of the institutions promoting the birth of BIREME are the Pan-American Associations of Medical Schools (FEPAFEM), the National Library of Medicine of the United States (NLM), the São Paulo School of Medicine (EPM) and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO).

The agreement of cooperation between PAHO, Department of Health, Ministry of the Education and Sport, State of São Paulo Secretary of the Health and the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP/EPM) remain. Since 1967, BIREME has functioned and developed as a specialized center of PAHO for Latin America and the Caribbean in scientific health information technology.

During these 35 years, BIREME has promoted the cooperation between producers, intermediates and users of health information in tune with the methodologies and technological advances in the operation of information sources that answer in increasing mode to the local demands of brought up to date scientific information. All the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean participate directly or indirectly in the development of products and cooperative information services promoted by BIREME.

The Virtual Health Library (VHL) represents the model of cooperation of PAHO in scientific information technology in the age of the Internet. The VHL searches to promote equitable access to the information and, thus, to contribute to the continuous perfection of the management, planning activities, promotion, communication, research, education and attention to the health. The total decentralized operation of the VHL promotes the development of local capacities in the operation of sources of health information using technologies of information advanced and adjusted to the social and economic conditions of Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 1000 Latin American information centers become networked, directly or indirectly, with the VHL.

The conception, adoption and dissemination of the VHL model reaffirms the common denominator to fortify the information stream, and to develop local capacities that characterize the different models of operation that BIREME adopted and promoted to long of its the 35 years, with a high degree of pioneering.

We detach the continuation significant contributions in information products and services that are part of the history of the cooperative work promoted by BIREME:

• access to the bibliographical references of scientific literature indexed in the main international, regional and national databases. This service has been operating by BIREME since the end of the 1960's, using different solutions of teleprocessing, since the use of dedicated terminals of paper until the Internet. In the end of 1980's BIREME launched designs LILACS/CD-ROM and MEDLINE/CD-ROM that had allowed equitable access to these sources of information in all the countries of Latin America for the first time. The current information services of the VHL are decentralized, and BIREME operates a regional service for the scientific literature retrieval , in which the retrieved references contains links for full texts, as well as, for resumes of authors;
• access to scientific literature in paper. This service has been operating since the end of the 1960's by a network of the main health science libraries of Latin America and the Caribbean that share its information stocks. This service evolved continuously and its current version in the VHL is the SCAD - Cooperative Access to Documents, that is integrated to the information retrieval in databases and the document delivery by air mail, fax, Ariel and e-mail;
• training programs to librarians and information professionals in the operation of health information sources;
• bibliographic control of scientific and technical health literature in Latin America and Caribbean initially restricted to scientific biomedical journals, centralized through the publication Latin-American Index Medicus. At the end of the 1980's, the indexing had its methodology brought up to date, and the processing was totally decentralized and started to include beyond scientific journals all types of literature, covering the ample field of health sciences. The database LILACS is born, that coincides with the establishment of the Latin American and Caribbean System on Health Sciences Information. In the VHL model, the LILACS consists in a network of decentralized databases and near future the bibliographical metadata will be extracted automatically from the full texts;
• full texts electronic online publication . The SciELO Model of electronic publication, developed and promoted in partnership with the FAPESP, represents an advance notable in the scientific communication when promoting in radix mode the visibility and accessibility of our scientific production, including the our best scientific journals, as well as, other types of literature. SciELO also offers mechanisms for quality evaluation, as well as, for measures of use and impact of publications; adoption, adaptation and development of methodologies and technologies of information for the operation of sources of information in the economic, social conditions and of infrastructure of information technologies. The methodologies and technologies developed for BIREME and partners along last the three decades are of free access for all cooperating institutions. The architecture of operation decentralized of the VHL with instruments of public domain and common usage represents an enormous challenge, but it also means the capacity building of the countries in the operation of information technologies of strategy importance for the development.
• development of health sciences terminology operating in Portuguese, Spanish and English. The terminology, known as Health Science Descriptors (DeCS), includes the translation of the descriptors of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and with special categories created in the area of public health and Homeopathy. In the VHL, DeCS is used for the indexing and navigation through the networks of information sources;
• intensive interchange of experiences and continuing education programs, that are systemize periodically through meetings and congresses involving the representatives of the producers , intermediates institutions and users of information in the region and international specialists. In this direction, the periodic meetings of the Latin American and Caribbean System on Health Sciences Information had given place to the meetings of regional coordination of the VHL, that today constitutes the main instance of coordination of the VHL. As integral part of the promotion of information flow in the region, every 2 years since 1992, BIREME has promoted the Regional Congress of Health Sciences Information (CRICS). This Congress constitutes an international reference meeting for the interchange of experiences and continuing education in scientific health information. In 2003, we are going to CRICS 6 in Puebla, Mexico. The intensification of the activities of interchange promoted by the VHL has lead to the election of BIREME as headquarters for the next International Congress on Medical Librarianship (9th ICML), to be held in 2005, the first time in Latin America.

The evolution and the successes of BIREME in these 35 years of life are the accomplishment of a great number of institutions and professionals.

On April 22, 2002, we will commemorate the 35 years of BIREME. In a ceremony at the UNIFESP campus, there will be a congregation of collaborating authorities and institutions of BIREME, former directors, employees and former-employees of BIREME, as well as representatives of the national institutions and international that cooperate with BIREME.

Come and give congratulations to the 35 years of BIREME!