This issue opens with a very interesting study by Freitas, Gomes and Souza, which tells us about the contribution of distinguished European and American specialists to the affirmation of IC in Brazil, a history that helps us to better understand the epistemological foundations of the field and its evolution.

This is followed by a series of five articles exploring topics in the field of archives, from citizen participation in Portuguese municipal archives (Alvim and Patrício) to the legal regulation of community archives in Brazil (Rangel), as well as more technical aspects such as classification (Sousa), evaluation and selection (Santos and Afonso) and risk management (Menezes). In addition to these works, there are two more closely related to archives, one on issues of public access to information (Arcanjo and Pinto) and the other on the preservation of personal collections (Lima).

The relationship between information, memory and power is analyzed in the texts by Veronez Júnior, Lichucha and Teixeira, who address the political, social and institutional dimensions of archives, and by Sousa, Maramarque, Dal’Evedove and Santos, who discuss the role of librarianship against “epistemicide”, focusing on the case of Palestine.

Then there are three papers that focus on the analysis and retrieval of information from less common documents that are not usually the subject of interest. These include “comic strips” (Bim and Tolare), “flute scores” (Aranha, Costa and Redigolo) and “urban graffiti” (Lira, Pajeú and Salceo), which, due to their specific characteristics, pose interesting problems for the treatment, preservation and retrieval of information.

Equally challenging are the problems of indexing “narrative works of fiction” (Guimarães, Mafra and Cordeiro) and the development of indexing policies for specific situations, such as the case study of Pessoa and Felipe’s authorship, which can serve as an example for other similar situations.

We also have a topical issue – disinformation – dealt with by Silva, Figueiredo and Padilha, who try to understand the extent to which this problem is studied in academic works in the field of Librarianship.

At the end of this long list of articles, in the a&b open section, we publish a study by Pinto, Santos, Silva and Chaves, which is still in its infancy (it uses a small sample of students from a course), but already has interesting results, on the impacts of distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, namely by analyzing the feelings of those students who were subjected to remote learning. Finally, in Debate and Criticism, Borges offers us a review of a work on Parliamentarism and Encyclopedism, which is an invitation to reflect at a time when Western democracies are facing so many threats and challenges.