What university library? Activities of Minas Gerais University libraries and the informational needs of its researchers

Abstract

This article investigate on the solution of informational needs of research and postgraduate studies by university libraries and starts from the recent literature of the field. In an investigative study in ten federal universities of Minas Gerais, we seek to draw aspects such as: sources of information and its access, the library customer service and library planning and action. Where interviewed postgraduate students, professors and librarians of three areas of knowledge. The study of data points the necessity of an information policy for science and technology, with emphasis on the role of the university library in federal institutions. The overload of information work by researchers highlights the need of a library allied to research. The training of librarians, the creation an infrastructure that can construct academic institutional repositories, the development of criteria for evaluation of academic libraries, the development of collections for research and postgraduate studies, a service planinng, assistance in identifying and filtering of data and informational training of users, the record of library policies and means of quantifying their effects were determined as the main pathways for the university library to reassume its role as co-producer of knowledge.