Estudo das características de software e implementação de um software livre para o sistema de gerenciamento de Bibliotecas Universitárias Federais Brasileiras

Abstract

The new technologies are revolutionizing the traditional activities of register, organization and availability of the information. These technologies are impacting the information systems in such activities developed in libraries, mainly the university ones. The concern of this research was to ascertain the situation of Brazilian federal libraries on the use of software for information management of the activities of libraries. Fifty two federal Brazilian university libraries was consulted, among them 34 (65.38%) responded to the questionnaire. Data collection was carried out in three stages in character of continuity for deepening of the issues raised. Therefore, this research aimed to study the characteristics of the software used by the Brazilian federal university libraries to verify the same contribution to the performance of libraries. There was no library that uses free software, but has appeared in the results the software PHL which is a free software distributed only in the libraries, for their deployment and use in a unique station and its source code is not available for amendments and require permission developer of the PHL. The software more cited was the Pergamum, which currently is the most complete Brazilian software. The second software more cited was the MicroISIS, although their main goal is achieving the storage of textual data rather than automate the various activities of a library. Other softwares appeared in the research, with a smaller number of occurrences: Ortodoc, Sophia, Virtua, PHL.7 and VTLS. It was also found that some libraries use software developed in the is universities, called isolated automation systems (in house programs). From the results found, it was possible to develop a free software and its release under the General Public License (GPL) for the management of activities of the Brazilian federal university libraries. This software, called OpenLibris, was developed through programming languages for web. For it is retrieval of information incorporates the main features of the software already used by studys libraries. It emphasizes the services of reference in the digital environment and the creation of interface agents, which will be able to build and facilitate the path of users, in the access to the that they need. With the development of the OpenLibris, it was proved that is possible to join in the only software for library: - the functions of automation of the several administrative and technical routines of a library; - modules of digital library; - module for the digital reference services (synchronous and not synchronous), in other words, the integration of several technologies in the only one software. And that is possible to develop softwares for the university libraries using only free solutions.