Mediação em serviços de disseminação seletiva de informações no ambiente de bibliotecas digitais federadas

Abstract

SOUTO, Leonardo Fernandes. Mediation in selective dissemination of information services in the context of federated digital libraries. 2008. 238 f. Tese (Doutorado em Ciencia da Informacao) – Escola de Comunicacao e Artes, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, 2008. Technological advances have facilitated the development of various resources enabling the implementation of selective dissemination of information services which offer autonomy to users. Thus, the objective was to analyze the process of selective dissemination of information, through an exploratory study in a federated digital library, aiming to enhance the mediation by human intervention. For this, a literature review was made comprising the themes: selective dissemination of information and digital libraries, assuming mediation from the perspective of Kuhlthau. Also, it was conducted a case study based on NEP (New Economics Papers), a service of the digital library RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) being the data collection made from various sources of evidence. Regarding the questionnaire used in the data collection, out of 61 volunteers, who were responsible for selecting information on the NEP themes to be disseminated, 41 responded the questionnaire. For data analysis, derived from responses from the questionnaires, it was used content analysis, seeking to identify relevant factors related to the analyzed variables (interaction between mediators and users, documents' selection, mediators' motivation, services’ impact and mediators' profile), promoting, when necessary, the grouping of similar responses into categories, emphasizing thus, the occurrence of a particular factor and not it's frequency. Among the results are: characterization of three different generations of selective dissemination of information services, in relation to technological development; identification of different possibilities and levels of mediation in services of selective dissemination of information; identification of factors related to the variables analyzed, in relation to the mediation made by means of human intervention in services of selective dissemination of information. It is found that, although the technology allows the autonomy of the user, referring to the selective dissemination of information services, it is possible to make a previous planning that recognize the possibility of acting from different levels of mediation to be adopted, since the presence of mediation can add value to the service.