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Education digital libraries management
Santos, Gildenir Carolino; Passos, Rosemary; Ribeiro, Célia Maria

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Education digital libraries
management

Sharing the experience of UNICAMP
education faculty

Rosemary Passos, Gildenir Carolino Santos and
Célia Maria Ribeiro

State University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

Purpose – This work aims to report the experience of implementing a university digital library by
introducing all the technical/administrative and scientific production in the education field.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes the process of conception, information
architecture, the steps and methodology for structuring and establishing of the Digital Library of the
Faculty of Education of the State University of Campinas (BDE – FE/UNICAMP), with the
partnership of the UNICAMP Libraries System (SBU/UNICAMP), which manages the Nou-Rau
software and stores the Digital Library of UNICAMP (BDU). It also identifies the skills and abilities the
information professional must have, concerning the definition of criteria for the evaluation and
selection of documents to be scanned, and establishes management procedures for the implementation
of services derived from this new tool for retrieving information in the educational area.

Findings – The paper finds that the constitution of a multidisciplinary staff and the skills and
abilities required of an information professional involved in designing digital libraries is the object of
discussion in several forums. The technical-scientific skills are the most important ones, since this
professional must be able to act in a changing environment, from an analogical to a digital culture. The
attitude of the information professional, always related to a strictly technical situation, observed along
this career’s development, also goes through changes, and demands a professional who is a manager, a
leader, visionary and strategist or, in other words, a real agent of changes.

Originality/value – The purpose of the BDE – FE/UNICAMP is to store and make electronically
available to users the production of professors, students, employees (technicians) and the
administration staff, generated within the Faculty. The implementation of this source of research,
therefore, meets the expectation of the users and helps to spread the information.

Keywords Digital libraries, Information management, Information literacy, Brazil

Paper type Case study

1. Introduction
It is clear today that digital libraries are well established in institutions of higher
education in Brazil. The scientific production and researches developed by the
academic community demand real time procedures of validation, confirmation and
dissemination of the information produced, due to the importance of speed in
knowledge communication.

The arrival of the electronic information society has drastically changed the time
and space delimitation of information. The emergence of information technology tools

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/1065-075X.htm

Education digital
libraries

management

219

Received January 2008
Revised March 2008
Accepted April 2008

OCLC Systems & Services:
International digital library

perspectives
Vol. 24 No. 4, 2008

pp. 219-226
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited

1065-075X
DOI 10.1108/10650750810914229


provided the necessary infra-structure for changes with no return, in the relationship
between information and its users (Barreto, 2006).

This perspective refers to the role played by this information storing and spreading
tool – the digital libraries – that have become fundamental to allow simultaneous
interactivity. At the same time, digital libraries are responsible for the real time access
to information, “[. . .] and give access in multiple ways of interaction between the
receiver and the information structure contained in this space” (Barreto, 2006). The
context described gives start to the discussion proposed in this article, reveals the
concern with the building of digital libraries models, information stocks reservoirs, as
well as the way users will have access to this documentation, as stated by Barreto
(2006).

The information flow between the digital stocks and the receivers comprises two
criteria: that of information technology, which aims to make possible the widest and
best access available; and the information science criterion, which intervenes to qualify
this access in terms of users’ individual competencies to assimilate the information.

The responsibility for the information science criterion is up to the information
professional, who will navigate the “non-presential spaces,” adding new abilities and
competencies to the “traditional tasks of the occupation.” These are necessary to
manage a digital library architecture, as well as to select the informational contents
that will be available to users.

2. Digital libraries – a brief concept
According to da Silva et al. (2006), the subject digital library is a frequent theme on
information science and librarianship journal articles and communications on events.
To emphasize this, the authors mention the publication of a special issue of
Information Science in 2001 and the International Workshop “Information Policies on
Digital Libraries” which took place at UNICAMP in 2003, as an example of facts that
reveal the importance of this discussion nowadays.

For this reason, some authors made the most of the concept of the digital library,
sometimes comparing it to an electronic library. The difference between these sources
of information is that the digital library puts the full contents of documents at users’
disposal as they are already digitized; in its turn the electronic library, because it is
completely automated, offers services online for users (Machado et al., 1999).

The scanned collections are analyzed by some authors.
Zang et al. (2001), consider the digital library as a way of presenting collections that

can be scanned and stored in several types of media, such as floppy and hard disks or
tape and compact disc. Pereira and Rutina (1999) quoted by Santos (2005, p. 281), state
that the digital library is the one that, besides the catalog, has “[. . .] texts of documents
of the collection stored in digital format, so they can be read from the screen of a
computer or imported (downloaded) to the hard disk [. . .]”. The permission to read
documents and the possibility of downloading are the main characteristics of digital
libraries at the moment, when the focus on digital inclusion and the virtual world
access expansion prevails.

To Rosetto (2003), the digital library is the one that considers documents generated
or transposed to the digital (electronic) environment, an information service (in all sorts

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of formats), where all the resources are available in the form of electronic processing
(acquisition, storing, preservation, retrieving and access through digital technologies).

The scientific and technological development in Brazil happens at the same time as
the establishment of digital libraries in different fields of activity. They become a tool
for knowledge access, sharing and cooperation, which allows all the scattered and
disorganized information available from the internet to be selected and stored, creating
a channel of relevant information distribution with good quality.

3. Digital library of education
The Education Digital Library of UNICAMP (BDE/UNICAMP) was conceived in July
2006, aiming to store and make the scientific and technical production of UNICAMP
Education Faculty researchers electronically available in its architecture, according to
technical norms.

In the scope of a university where the principles of action are to stimulate teaching,
research and specialization, the digital library becomes a proactive deed to offer the
academic community the opportunity to regularly publish their work through web
systems, spreading knowledge, optimizing the scientific communication flow and
reducing the cycle of new knowledge generation (Vicentini, 2006).

It is a small-sized digital library with an access link on the homepage of the Digital
Library of UNICAMP (BDU/UNICAMP), a service offered by UNICAMP through its
library system. The management of this system is available through an open software
conceived at the University, called “Nou-Rau.” It is based on the Linux operational
system, Apache WWW server, PHP language and PostGress data.

BDE has four distinct parts to arrange bibliographic supports distribution. They
comprise a repository of digital contents of all the UNICAMP Education Faculty
production.

3.1. Architecture of the Education Digital Library (BDE) – methodology
The architecture of BDE was developed according to the BDU’s architecture, which
hosts the access link to the Education Digital Library. Its structure is composed by four
large groups as in the Digital Library of UNICAMP’s architecture, namely professors’
production, students’ production, technical production and administrative production:

(1) Professors’ production – works of professors of the Education Faculty.

(2) Students’ production – works of students of the Education Faculty.

(3) Technical production – works of technical support of the Education Faculty.

(4) Administrative production – works of administrative collaborators of the
Education Faculty.

Besides this division by authors of works, the BDE’s architecture is divided in four
levels:

(1) Main topic. This shows the BDU’s homepage, where the Library’s content is
listed. At this level is the access link to BDE.

(2) Subtopic. This describes BDE’s content, where four large groups, including the
Faculty of Education’s intellectual production (professors, students, technical
and administrative) can be found.

Education digital
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(3) Subtopic. This describes the organization from A to Z, of producers of the works
introduced in the Library’s database.

(4) Subtopic. This describes the distribution of material types (article, book scrap,
chapter, etc.) as they are registered in BDE’s catalog structure.

Figures 1-3 show the steps to access the intellectual production of FE/UNICAMP in
digital format, in the same environment as BDU.

4. Management of the education digital library – procedures
It is possible to build digital libraries, provided that there is a proper plan, knowledge of
informatics language, and the suitable software environment to manage the processes.

Regarding the requirements for digital libraries management, Vicentini (2006),
emphasizes the following items, considered ideal for planning:

(1) Collections/contents.

(2) Human resources:
. multidisciplinary staff; and
. training.

(3) Standardization:
. metadata;
. MARC;
. format of digital archive; and
. digitization patterns.

Figure 1.
BDE main entrance from
BDU web site

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Figure 2.
Main screen with BDE’s

production levels

Figure 3.
Access screen with the

types of materials
included at BDE

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(4) Technology:
. Hardware.
. Software:

– open; and

– proprietary.

. Flexibility of development.

. Programming language.

. Use of protocols of communication to import and export data.

(5) Digitization.

(6) Authorship warranty right.

(7) Digital document preservation.

Observing these basic requirements, the management of a digital library will be
suitable to its principles of an information professional, with the necessary
competencies and abilities to run an academic or public cyberspace, in an education
institution or not.

In this context, BDE followed every step suggested in the Faculty of Education
Digital Library planning and management, becoming the first academic library to own
a logical content organization, distributed by the type of technical-scientific
production.

To add value to the BDE’s indexed information, therefore, all the materials were
classified according to the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), aiming to make it
easier for users to memorize subjects linked to the traditional collections in the sense of
technical organization.

5. Final considerations
Considering the new time of traditional libraries, when new services and tools are
introduced in daily routines, concerning digital library management, the role of
librarians acquires a magnitude that demands additional qualified knowledge about
appropriate technologies, learning and interaction with several kind of organizations,
people and institutions dedicated to the production, communication and diffusion of
information in a larger geographic space. (Santos and Passos, 2004).

The digital library was the chosen means to disseminate and preserve a collection in
continuous growth, mainly because of the possibility of expanding the limits of access
and use of information beyond time and physical space of traditional libraries (Pavão
et al., 2005).

To Vicentini (2006), one of the agents that benefits the development of a digital
library is the composition of a multidisciplinary staff involved in the project, taking
into consideration the following aspects: human resources (people specialized in the use
of equipments and specific knowledge to develop the tasks); technological resources
(acquisition of the right equipments and outlining economic resources); and
motivational resources (incentive to the staff and collaborators for the development
of the digital library product).

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The competencies and abilities of the informational professional have been the
subject of discussions in several forums. Competencies were classified in 2002 in four
main categories:

(1) communication and expression competencies;

(2) technical-scientific competencies;

(3) managerial competencies; and

(4) political competencies.

Regarding the abilities demanded from this professional to develop digital libraries, the
technical-scientific competencies are emphasized, since this professional must be able
to select, register, store, retrieve and diffuse the recorded information to any electronic
media; he or she must also use and disseminate information sources, products and
resources in different supporting systems, and establish plans and execution of studies,
as well as the training for the information users.

The competencies of the information professional in the digital libraries’ planning
and operation, therefore, are necessarily associated to the discussions about the deep
changes from the analogical culture to the digital culture, as well as about the change
of attitude of the information professional related to the technical conditions, observed
along this career’s development. The present circumstances in information units,
however, demands someone who is a manager, a leader, a visionary and strategist
professional, in other words, a real agent of changes.

References

Barreto, A.A. (2006), “Prefacio”, in Marcondes, C.H., Kuramoto, H. and Toutain, L.B. (Eds),
Bibliotecas digitais: saberes e práticas, 2nd ed., UFBA and IBICT, Salvador and São Paulo,
pp. 7-9.

da Silva, H.P., Jambeiro, O. and Barreto, A.M. (2006), “Bibliotecas digitais: uma nova cultura, um novo
conceito, um novo profissional”, in Marcondes, C.H., Kuramoto, H. and Toutain, L.B. (Eds),
Bibliotecas digitais: saberes e práticas, 2nd ed., UFBA and IBICT, Salvador and São Paulo,
pp. 259-82.

Machado, R.N., Novaes, M.S.F. and Santos, A.H. (1999), “Biblioteca do futuro na percepção de
profissionais da informação”, Transinformação, Vol. 11 No. 3, September/December,
pp. 215-22.

Pavão, C.G., Pouzada, E.V.S. and Mathias, M.A.(2005), Concepção e implementação da Biblioteca
Digital da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre.

Pereira, E.C. and Rutina, R. (1999), “O século XXI e o sonho da biblioteca universal: quase seis mil
anos de evolução na produção, registro e socialização do conhecimento”, Perspectivas
Ciência da Informação, Belo Horizonte, Vol. 4 No. 1, January/June, pp. 5-19.

Rosetto, M. (2003), “Metadados e recuperação da informação: padrões para bibliotecas digitais”,
Ciberética: Simpósio Internacional de Propriedade Intelectual, Informação e Ética, 2,
available at: www.ciberetica.org.br (accessed 20 March 2007).

Santos, G.C. (2005), “Mapeamento dos suportes de auxı́lio ao ensino tradicional: uma
contextualização, da biblioteca, do livro, do computador, da Internet e da tecnologia na
educação”, in Bittencour, A.B. and Oliveira, W.M. Jr (Eds), Estudo, pensamento e criação,
FE/UNICAMP, Campinas, pp. 277-89.

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Santos, G.C. and Passos, R. (2004), “Estratégias para a estruturação de um website no
desenvolvimento de bibliotecas digitais”, ETD – Educação Temática Digital, Campinas,
Vol. 6 No. 1, June, available at: http://143.106.58.55/revista/include/getdoc.php?id ¼
88&article ¼ 26&mode ¼ pdf (accessed 25 May 2007).

Vicentini, L.A. (2006), “Gestão em Biblioteca digitais”, in Marcondes, C.H., Kuramoto, H. and
Toutain, L.B. (Eds), Bibliotecas digitais: saberes e práticas, 2nd ed., UFBA and IBICT,
Salvador and São Paulo, pp. 239-57.

Zang, N., Filipiak, E., Senger, I. and da Silva, T.L. (2001), “Biblioteca virtual: conceito,
metodologia e implantação”, Revista de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação, Erechim, Vol. 1 No. 1,
pp. 217-36, available at: www.uri.br/publicacoes/revistappg/ano1 n1/ (accessed 20
February 2001).

Further reading

Passos, R. and Santos, G.C. (2005), Competência em informação na sociedade da aprendizagem,
Kairós, Bauru.

Silva, N.C., Sá, N.O. and Furtado, S.R.S. (2004), “Bibliotecas digitais: do conceito às práticas”,
Simpósio Internacional de Bibliotecas Digitais, 2, UNICAMP, Campinas, available at: http://
libdigi.unicamp.br/document/?code ¼ 8304 (accessed 8 April 2007).

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