O passado no presente: a recuperação da informação na Seção SID da Biblioteca Central da Universidade Federal da Paraíba

Abstract

Information retrieval is constituted a planned action of use of information sources to serve the information needs of users. In this theme, it was developed an exploratory and descriptive research whose main objective is to investigate the evolution of information retrieval in the Central Library of the Federal University of Paraíba, from the 1990s to the present day. By using Oral History, from the experience reports of a librarian who worked in the Information and Documentation Section (SID), the research reveals how information retrieval in the Central Library was processed in the investigated period. The proposal consists to describe how were processed the search and retrieval of information in different periods and what the main changes that occurred along the time. Also, it aims to preserve the knowledge of the interviewed librarian. Basing on a qualitative approach, the research appoints the following results: it describes how information retrieval was done in different periods, explaining how information retrieval was processed in the Central Library, revealing its diverse phases, from printed media to CD-ROM and the Internet. It also identifies the information supports and the information sources that are most used by the users. Information retrieval has passed by many phases: first, when media were printed, searching was done in reference journals and in the attendance to the solicitations of COMUT users used microfiche of the National Collective Catalogue of Periodic and Serial Publications. Later, information retrieval was done through databases in CD-ROM, moment in which users scheduled in the SID the hour to do the research. The CD-ROM databases were signed by the Central Library and most of them had half-year periodicity. In these two phases, the request orders of COMUT users were done by the post office. The Internet emerged in the 1990s, and the databases provided online access through CAPES website and other available basis, online and free, which can be accessed by any person at any time. At that time, the most used information sources in the Central Library were printed reference journals in English language: Chemical Abstracts, Index Medicus, Biological Abstracts and Food Science and Technology Abstracts. The users of the area of Health who did not read English used the Index Medicus Latino-Americano, which was edited in Portuguese and in Spanish language. In the period of predominance of CD-ROM, it was used LILACS and those who opted by literature in English language used MEDLINE. It is concluded that the different supports were important in their times, once they were the best way to have access to scientific production in different periods. Nowadays, the Internet is constituted as the best way of access to these documents because the access is instantaneous.