Avaliação das coleções de livros digitais da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora: a perspectiva dos usuários

Abstract

Brazilian university libraries have been expanding their collection of digital and electronic books. Despite this, there is no research that deals with the evaluation of this collection. There are papers that deal with the development of digital and electronic book collections, but the research is focused on the selection and acquisition stages. With the fast expansion of the collection of digital and electronic books, there is an urgent need to develop methodologies to evaluate them. The starting point of the research was the need to demonstrate to the institution, through an evaluation methodology, the importance of maintaining and expanding the collection of digital and electronic books in the Library, even if the high cost of collections and business models practiced in the Library in Brazil. In 2012 the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF) acquired the first collection of digital books with the objective of attending undergraduate courses in classroom and distance course from the two Campuses of the institution. In the following years the collection was expanded, but in the face of the economic crisis that affects educational institutions, the maintenance and expansion of the titles is threatened. Libraries need to prove the importance of keeping collections of digital and electronic books in their collections and the evaluation is the best way. The evaluation of the UFJF collection of digital books, object of study of this work, occurred through the application of a questionnaire to teachers in the areas of biological sciences, health sciences, earth and science, and engineering that analyzed the use of digital books in their academic practices. The perspective of teaching users demonstrated the importance of this collection available at the university and pointed out deficiencies that should be taken into account to encourage, improve and disseminate the use of digital and electronic books within the UFJF.