Competência em informação dos profissionais que atuam em museus: contribuição com os fazeres museológicos em inter-relação com a aprendizagem e a comunidade de prática

Abstract

As in all domains, information is also crucial for the daily practice of the work of a museum staff. The museum operational chain is preceded by the informational input for its realization. In this context, information in the museum is worked on, maintained, organized, mediated, transformed and shared by professionals who work in these spaces, regardless of the role they are performing. The team of workers is made up of professionals from cleaning services, security, scholarship holders, workers directly linked to the safeguarding and communication functions (including interns and outsourced workers) and to the management of the museum. After all, everyone is part of the museum team and somehow deals with the information input. Therefore, this research understands and calls all museum workers, as information professionals in museums. Therefore, the object of investigation of the research referred to information professionals in museums, who, when working in an information system, presupposes that all museological activities are or should be part of a shared flow of information. Because it is only by sharing technical information related to museum activities that professionals will be able to minimize their information needs, since the need for information is constant and changing. In this sense, information literacy as a continuous and collective learning process can contribute to boosting teamwork. Therefore, it is necessary for the museum to provide an environment aimed at social interaction, as a community of practice. To this end, the investigation sought to answer the following question: How do information professionals in museums relate to the daily practice of work, with regard to the need, use and sharing of information, alluding to museological activities. The methodological procedures of the research started from a systematic literature review, creation of the research instrument and the creation of analytical categories based on the dimensions of information literacy of the collected data, namely: category of technical dimension of information literacy, category of dimension aesthetics of information literacy, the ethical dimension category of information literacy and the political dimension category of information literacy. The selection of the sample for carrying out the research with information professionals in museums was extracted from the MUSEUSbr platform of the Brazilian Institute of Museums. The research environment took place throughout the State of Minas Gerais, through the 12 mesoregions that compose it. The research had as general objective to understand the information literacy that the information professional in the museum has and the one that is necessary to him, in order to attenuate his need for information during the daily practice of work, about the use and sharing of information in the museum activities. The specific objectives were: to discuss, based on the literature, information literacy and its dimensions regarding the activities performed by information professionals in museums; identify the information needs of information professionals in 13 museums, considering the dimensions of literacy in technical, aesthetic, ethical and political information; to find out if the researched institutions work with their team as in a community of practice (mediation and information sharing - collective and continuous learning - infoeducation - collaboration); and, finally, to propose an information competence matrix for the execution of museological activities. Results: The research findings indicated, among other aspects, a lack of financial resources from governments for the maintenance of museums, which directly reflects the management's failure to develop training programs for information professionals in museums. In this way, in a self-sustaining way, the research proposed a matrix for the development of information literacy for museum activities related to the appropriation of information, which can and should be adaptable for each museum and its team, in order to meet the specificities and information needs. The conclusion observed with the development of the research was that the movement of information literacy is similar to museum institutions. Both are dynamic processes of citizens' emancipation by promoting continuous and collective learning, since nothing is more current than the individual, when appropriating information and information technologies, knowing and respecting the different forms of existing cultural representation.