At the end of October 2026, the publisher Tirant Lo Blanch released, within its Plural series, the four volumes of Select Works of Dr. José López Yepes: Father of Documentation. Spanning over 2,200 pages, this collection gathers, organizes, and reintroduces into circulation a substantial portion of the output of José López Yepes (1946–2023), Professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and one of the pivotal figures in establishing Documentation as a scientific discipline in Spain and Iberoamerica.
I had the privilege of participating in this project as coordinator and editor, alongside Federico Hernández Pacheco, Agustín Vivas Moreno, and Alfonso López Yepes. In this post, I explain what each volume contains, how the work has been organized, and why I believe it is essential reading for those working in Library and Information Science.
Fig. 1. The coordinators and editors of the Select Works of Dr. José López Yepes. From right to left in the image: Professors Agustín Vivas Moreno (UNEX), Federico Hernández Pacheco (UNAM), Alfonso López Yepes (UCM), José López Yepes (UCM), and Manuel Blázquez Ochando (UCM). [Image generated with AI. Created by the author]
Why a selection of works
López Yepes’s body of work is extensive and widely dispersed: articles in Spanish and Latin American journals, book chapters, conference proceedings, hard-to-find monographs, and teaching materials published over more than five decades, from 1967 to 2023. Bringing this material together has clear practical value, as it facilitates access and citation; it also holds historiographical significance: read collectively, it reveals how Documentation was established as an autonomous discipline, how its university programs were institutionalized, and how enduring bridges were built between Spain and Latin America.
From his chair, obtained in 1980, López Yepes promoted official academic programs in the field, worked on its theoretical and epistemological foundations, encouraged specialized scientific journals, and trained several generations of professionals and researchers. Concepts he introduced, such as homo documentator, have now become part of the standard terminology of the discipline. His close ties with Latin American universities—culminating in an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz—largely explain the Iberoamerican orientation of this edition.
Organization of the work
Each volume corresponds to a thematic strand in his career and includes an introduction prepared by one of the editors. Volumes I and IV conclude with a chapter-by-chapter bibliography and an alphabetical bibliographic index, designed to assist researchers studying his work. All four volumes are available in print (paperback) and as e-books; the printed edition includes a code for cloud-based access.
Volume I. Information Sciences and Documentation Sciences
364 pages · Print ISBN: 9791370383008 · Ebook ISBN: 9791370383015
Catalog and purchase at Tirant Lo Blanch México
Volume II. Research Methodology
724 pages · Print ISBN: 9791370383022 · Ebook ISBN: 9791370383039
Catalog and purchase at Tirant Lo Blanch México
Volume III. Historical Contents
604 pages · Print ISBN: 9791370383046 · Ebook ISBN: 9791370383053
Catalog and purchase at Tirant Lo Blanch México
Volume IV. Other Contents and Multimedia
568 pages · Print ISBN: 9791370383060 · Ebook ISBN: 9791370383077
Catalog and purchase at Tirant Lo Blanch México
A research tool and a tribute
These selected works are simultaneously a research tool and a tribute. A tool, because they make accessible to researchers, teachers, and students texts that until now had to be traced across publications of very diverse origins, and they do so with a bibliographic apparatus that facilitates their use and citation. A tribute, because they allow one to see at a glance the coherence of a career that united theory, history, methodology, and teaching, and always understood the university as a place where ideas are woven together.
I wish to thank Federico Hernández Pacheco, Agustín Vivas Moreno, and Alfonso López Yepes for their shared work over these past months, as well as the foreword authors, the contributors of the introductory studies, and all colleagues from Spain and Latin America who made this edition possible. I hope that these four volumes will enable new generations of documentation scholars to read directly the work of the person who did so much for the discipline.
How to cite the volumes
- López Yepes, J. (2026). Select works of Dr. José López Yepes: father of documentation. Volume I. Information sciences and documentation sciences (F. Hernández Pacheco, A. Vivas Moreno, A. López Yepes, & M. Blázquez Ochando, Eds.). Tirant Lo Blanch.
- López Yepes, J. (2026). Select works of Dr. José López Yepes: father of documentation. Volume II. Research methodology (F. Hernández Pacheco, A. Vivas Moreno, A. López Yepes, & M. Blázquez Ochando, Eds.). Tirant Lo Blanch.
- López Yepes, J. (2026). Select works of Dr. José López Yepes: father of documentation. Volume III. Historical contents (F. Hernández Pacheco, A. Vivas Moreno, A. López Yepes, & M. Blázquez Ochando, Eds.). Tirant Lo Blanch.
- López Yepes, J. (2026). Select works of Dr. José López Yepes: father of documentation. Volume IV. Other contents and multimedia (F. Hernández Pacheco, A. Vivas Moreno, A. López Yepes, & M. Blázquez Ochando, Eds.). Tirant Lo Blanch.
Where to obtain them
All four volumes (Tirant Lo Blanch Publishing, Plural series, 1st edition, 2026) can be purchased in print and electronic formats through Tirant Lo Blanch México. Once available in the Tirant Lo Blanch España catalog, I will update this entry with the corresponding links.