Dimensão subjetiva da gestão de bibliotecas universitárias

Abstract

Recent studies from the UFMG Information Science School developed by Paula (2005; 2012), Araújo (2013) and Sá (2015) have demonstrated that it is possible to capture and understand the subjectivity present in the decision-making processes through the clinical approach to information. This approach stimulates a careful look at the information, capturing the symbolic-affective dimensions that permeate them, aiming at a more in-depth analysis of the 'hows' and the 'whys' of the investigated phenomena. Using this approach, this study aimed to investigate the possible constitutive participation of subjectivity in decision making when facing the challenges of the management of libraries of a federal university. In-depth interviews were used for data collection and, in hermeneutics, the content was analyzed by investigating the processes of symbolization that permeate the subjects speeches - reconstruction of the real (of the gathered information) from the fragments (symbolic-affective dimensions) by which it presents itself. In order to enable this investigation, dictionaries of symbols were used and the meanings found in them were amplified according to the content of the interviews and the contexts in which the participants were immersed. The analysis of the interviews showed that the challenges reported by the managers are practically the same: customer service, insufficient resources and, above all, personnel management. What changes is the way each one deals with these contingencies - which seems to interfere in decision-making processes. It was observed that data on gender and age of the managers interviewed did not affect how they deal with the reported decision-making processes. On the other hand, the experiences each interviewee had (both in the family and professionally) until they reached this position - the anxieties, limitations, experiences and affects of these subjects - seem to interfere in the way managers make decisions, with greater or less flexibility in compliance with rules, with more authority or more diplomacy, with greater or less emotional distance from the challenges faced. It was also observed that decisions are made more intuitively than rationally, not only in situations of urgency "created" by the managers, but also in those in which there are no pre-defined rules or requirements to comply with them. Therefore, it was possible to evidentiate the presence of subjectivity in the management of university libraries.