Avaliação dos serviços da base de dados da BRAPCI

Abstract

This paper reports the evaluation result of the services provided by the BRAPCI database, focusing on the use and access of the information and also user’s welfare; the participants of this research were undergraduate students whose are concluding the Library Science course, from Universidade Federal da Paraiba (UFPB). The Base de Dados Referencial de Artigos de Periódicos em Ciência da Informação (BRAPCI, in portuguese) – a periodical articles database concerning information science – is a product of the research Project “Opções metodológicas em pesquisa: a contribuição da área da informação para a produção de saberes no ensino superior” (namely: “Methodological options in research: contributions from the information Science field to the knowledge production at the college education”). The main goal of this research was evaluate the use and access of BRAPCI by the undergraduate students whose are concluding the Library Science course on the second semester of 2014, from UFPB. As a methodology, a qualitative and quantitative approach was used and, in addition to make the research proposal more viable, questionnaires were used as a data collection instrument, with open and closed questions, and also the use test, in order to analyze the easy and use of the database investigated. Considering the data analyses, it was observed that the focus of the study on ease use of BRAPCI, by the students – indicates that the students considered the article database easy in terms of use and access. Moreover, regarding the students opinion, it was possible to evaluate the BRAPCI as an easy use information service in a positive and satisfactory way. Finally, the conclusions emphasize that the BRAPCI, as an information recovery service, provides to the students, professors and researchers a dynamic research tool, due to indexed and organized information it offers in digital shape. Therefore, the BRAPCI, as well as other database, needs more disclosure, before it, it is necessary to plan disclosures way together with the academics and consequently from them to the students, focusing on the characteristics and pointing out its positive points.