Recognizing Best Practice in Portuguese Higher Education Libraries

The purpose of this paper is to identify best practices in order to improve the quality of services in Portuguese academic libraries. This article describes an ongoing project to assess the performance of library services, resulting from a partnership of six Portuguese higher education libraries. The study has three main steps: (1) selection of criteria to be evaluated and selection of their corresponding performance indicators; (2) data collection and analysis; (3) identification of best practices. The selection of the criteria to be evaluated is based on a mixed model combining the Common Assessment Framework and the Balanced Scorecard. The associated performance indicators are in accordance with International Standards ISO 11620:1998 and ISO 2789:2006

Guidelines, recommendations, and near future for university libraries

In the current context, library associations around the globe seek to present perspectives for the future, supporting professionals to develop strategies, projects, and skills. In Portugal, the Recommendations for Higher Education Libraries have given impetus to the work of professionals to face changes and continue their intervening and active role. At the same time, they aim to serve as a focus, creating national congruence in the areas of activity, and as an inspiration for action, motivating a convergence of information professionals, to contribute to greater unity and coherence of Higher Education Libraries in Portugal. This is the basis for this exploratory study. To this end, a literature review that embases a case study is carried out to understand the librarian's professional strategies that have been used throughout the Portuguese academic community. How do institutions and their professionals position themselves to support and develop actions around future challenges? How is being developed the support for teaching and learning, specifically in promoting information literacy skills and fostering digital fluency and user empowerment? How is addressed the support for research activities and scientific publication, especially in the context of Open Science? How is professional and organizational development that places the librarian at the center of processes and institutions as aggregators of synergies for continuous improvement actions? And finally, how are being taken projects to the design and provision of services and partnerships that facilitate and enhance the creation of networks for cultural expression, including the preservation and dissemination of documentary heritage.It is concluded that the preparation and planning based on guidelines work as stabilizers, which anchor the actions developed, at the same time that the winds of change allow the exploration of new paths and practices, thus enhancing a virtuous context of action

The COVID - 19 pandemic’s impact on the behavioural trends in the use of printed book or e-book a case study in Portugal and Brazil

Abstract:In a time of serious health crisis worldwide, this study is the extension of a case study already started (in February and March 2020) about the issue, reading behaviors, and preferences between the use of books and e-books. The COVID-19 pandemic came to impose social distancing in the world, closing universities, schools, and other services. The implementation of Internet services has presented itself as a valid response to the change that has so brutally arisen. Naturally, everyone had to adapt to it. In this context, the question about the preferences in using books or e-books is now even more relevant. This paper analyses the impact of COVID-19 in the behavioral trends in the use of scientific information from printed books and e-books in Portugal and Brazil. To this end, a survey was conducted on a user sample from various Portuguese and Brazilian higher education schools and public libraries. The first part focused on the characterization of the respondents, which includes data on gender and qualifications attended. In the second part, we obtained viewpoints about the advantages and disadvantages of each medium, frequency of use, choice of medium according to the purpose of reading, and devices used. The results let us examine the factors that influence and change the behaviors of users concerning their choice. Research such as this is beneficial to support the decision not only in selecting the information resources to be bought or pondering user preferences, but also to define strategies for advocating the use of various media that, rather than competitors, should be complimentary.This work is funded by national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology, under the project UIDB/00057/2020

Guidelines, recommendations, and near future for university libraries

In the current context, library associations around the globe seek to present perspectives for the future, supporting professionals to develop strategies, projects, and skills. In Portugal, the Recommendations for Higher Education Libraries have given impetus to the work of professionals to face changes and continue their intervening and active role. At the same time, they aim to serve as a focus, creating national congruence in the areas of activity, and as an inspiration for action, motivating a convergence of information professionals, to contribute to greater unity and coherence of Higher Education Libraries in Portugal. This is the basis for this exploratory study. To this end, a literature review that embases a case study is carried out to understand the librarian's professional strategies that have been used throughout the Portuguese academic community. How do institutions and their professionals position themselves to support and develop actions around future challenges? How is being developed the support for teaching and learning, specifically in promoting information literacy skills and fostering digital fluency and user empowerment? How is addressed the support for research activities and the scientific publication, especially in the context of Open Science? How is professional and organizational development that places the librarian at the center of processes and institutions as aggregators of synergies for continuous improvement actions? And finally, how are being taken projects to the design and provision of services and partnerships that facilitate and enhance the creation of networks for cultural expression, including the preservation and dissemination of documentary heritage? It is concluded that the preparation and planning based on guidelines work as stabilizers, which anchor the actions developed, at the same time that the winds of change allow the exploration of new paths and practices, thus enhancing a virtuous context of action.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Challenged by academic social networks: a case study inside University of Lisbon’ institutional repository

This communication reflects on the challenges brought by academic social networks to institutional repositories. The study reveals the practices of academics from the Faculties of Dental Medicine, Psychology and the Institute of Education on the issue of the visibility of scientific information in academic social networks and in institutional repositories. The data were obtained by analysing the profiles of professors and researchers in a professional social network, ResearchGate, crossed with the documents of the Institutional Repository of the University of Lisbon (Repositório.UL), related to the studied schools. Statistical methods and quantitative data were used to compare the behaviours of the teachers and the researchers concerning their preferences on scientific document dissemination throughout the World Wide Web.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Medição da Qualidade em Bibliotecas e Centros de Informação: Novos Indicadores de Desempenho

Este estudo pretende ser uma revisão de algumas metodologias, de avaliação da qualidade e do desempenho dos serviços prestados nas bibliotecas e centros de informação, emergentes nos últimos cinco anos. Existe abundante literatura sobre esta matéria que se encontra profundamente ligada à gestão da qualidade. Procurou-se, de modo sumário, enumerar e promover o conhecimento de instrumentos criados e implementados em vários países do mundo. Optou-se por realçar os projectos que mais se evidenciaram a nível internacional e mostraram ser reconhecidos como instrumentos úteis e válidos para aferir, em termos quantitativos, os serviços prestados por bibliotecas públicas, académicas ou especializadas. Á biblioteca física veio adicionar-se a biblioteca digital, ambas coexistem e completam-se nos serviços de documentação. Os bibliotecários e gestores de informação têm, que gerir simultaneamente recursos humanos e de informação com, os seguintes objectivos finais: proporcionar um acesso rápido à informação; satisfazer as expectativas do utilizador e reduzir os custos dos serviços. Tendo enfoque nestas metas, vários profissionais em todo o mundo investigaram e definiram grande quantidade de metodologias para optimizar o desempenho e a qualidade dos serviços prestados nas bibliotecas. Neste contexto, é importante avaliar os serviços, uma vez que, existe a necessidade de conhecer se “os profissionais estão a oferecer os melhores serviços possíveis, aos utilizadores certos e a um preço justo” (DAVIS, 2008). A emergência das tecnologias de informação nas bibliotecas trouxe várias questões e novas abordagens. Para efectuar quantificações foram estabelecidas e alteradas, recentemente, várias ferramentas, a saber: • Novos indicadores de desempenho definidos pela International Organization for Standardization (ISO 11620:2008, ISO 2789:2006 e ISO/TR 281181:2009) e pela International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) (POLL, te BOEKHORST, 2007); • Adopção da estrutura Balanced Scorecard; • Novas dimensões da metodologia LibQUAL; • Utilização do Método de Avaliação Contingencial

Quality Measures for Libraries and Information Services.

The purpose of this article is to describe briefly two quality evaluation models for academic libraries: the Portuguese investigation proposes an action model to measure the performance of the libraries of the Universidade do Porto (UP). This tool is justified by the CAF – Common Assessment Framework (an auto-evaluation tool based on the European Foundation Quality Management Excellence Model), the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP); the PAQ – Quality of Products and Services Evaluation Program of the SIBi/USP, based on the Model SERVQUAL, is an assessment research implemented in the academic libraries of the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), in Brazil. The proposal has been presented as being viable and necessary for the management of the libraries of the SIBi/USP

Behavioral trends in the use of printed book or e-book: a case study in Portuguese university libraries

This study analyses the behavioural trends in the use of scientific information from printed books and e-books and the way university libraries users choose to use it. To this end, a survey was conducted on a sample of users from various Portuguese higher education schools. The first part focused on the characterization of respondents, which includes data on gender, area of knowledge and academic level attended. In the second part we sought the opinion about advantages and disadvantages of each medium, frequency of use, choice of medium according to the purpose of reading, devices used and acquisition suggestions for the library. The results allow us to observe the factors that influence and affect the behaviours of users regarding their choice. Studies such as this help to support the decision in choosing the information resources to be purchased taking into account user preferences, but also to outline strategies for promoting the use of various media that, rather than competitors, should be complementary

Assessing the economic value of academic libraries

The assessment of academic libraries is an important management issue of the services and of Library Advocacy. Determining the monetary value of the services may be an interesting element at a time when there are constraints on the budgets of the institutions. The main aim of this paper is to calculate the tangible value in monetary terms of certain services of two libraries of the University of Lisbon. In this task we use six statistical indicators: document loans, accesses to Internet; accesses to computers, accesses to journals, training and interlibrary loans. The method to calculate the monetary value for a specialized quality service is to verify the current market value of the service, ie., the current price of the service that can be bought or sold in the free market (ISO16439:2014). According to this investigation we calculate the monetary values for these indicators. The cost-benefit value is also calculated, that is, the return on investment, the relationship between the total economic benefit of these indicators and the total resources invested in the library according to these indicators