Year after year, BIREME has been following its mission of being a center dedicated to scientific and technical health information for the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. Founded in Brazil in 1967, under the name of Regional MedicineLibrary (which the acronym BIREME comes from), it has always met the growing demand for up-to-date scientific literature from the Brazilian health systems and the communities of healthcareresearchers, professionals and students. Then, in 1982, its name changed to Latin-American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information so as to better express its dedication to the strengthening and expansion of the flow of scientific and technical health information across the region, but kept the acronym. Networking, based on decentralization, on the development of local capacities, on sharing information resources, on developing cooperative products and services, on designing common methodologies, has always been the foundation of BIREME's technical cooperationwork. It has been like this that the center established itself as an international model that fosters professional education with managerial and technical information with the adoption of information and communication paradigms that best meet local needs...(AU)