Building the future: the Brazilian university library in 2010

Abstract

Information technology will affect academic activities as well as the nature of the high education sector. This sector besides the need to assimilate these technologies will need to attend the requisites of market globalization and, as consequence, all theses changes will be reflected in the university library. Prospectives impacts will affect the structure (emphasis in user services, outsourcing of several services), in the financing aspect (growing of consortia in order to reduce costs), in services (electronic reference, support to long distance education programs, intelligent agents) and in the clientele (attending the great demand por high education which implies a diversity of people).

LIBRARY IN VIRTUAL REALITY - An Innovative Way for Accessing, Disseminating, and Sharing Information

“…The history of libraries shows that they have always depended on technology. Since the manuscripts for the use of printed texts, up to the information access through databases, the use of the CD-ROM, and the appearance of the digital library, in the end of the 1990's, and furthermore, to the incorporation of telecommunication networks, the technology was always present in libraries (Cunha, 2000).…”

“…Nowadays, according to Cunha (2000), we are approaching a new stage of evolution toward the Libraries in Virtual Reality (LVR), which can be considered as part of the libraries of the future.…”

Desenvolvimento das universidades e bibliotecas universitárias na Idade Média até à Modernidade

“…que,[...] permitiram maior rapidez no atendimento, consequente redução de custos e melhor aproveitamento de pessoas. SegundoCunha (2000) a biblioteca que, através dos séculos, foi para a universidade o ponto central, com o seu acervo de obras impressas, preservando o conhecimento da civilização, atualmente seu acervo existe sob muitas formas: texto, gráfico, som, algoritmo e simulação da realidade virtual, distribuído em redes mundiais, em representações digitais, acessíveis a qualquer indivíduo e não somente os acadêmicos.…”