Search

The results of a study about the opinions, needs and interests of the users of the hospital libraries of the central area of Portugal are presented. This research was carried out with the purpose of knowing if the resources and services of the libraries of the hospitals contribute to the quality of the care provided to the patients, to the practice of the research and to the continuous training of the professionals. For this purpose, a survey was carried out to 121 users of the libraries of seven hospitals in the central area of Portugal. The results highlight the strengths and weaknesses of library services, often little known, and whose assessment varies depending on the type of user and the initiatives developed by the libraries themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web 2.0 components and the collaborative and participatory environment associated with their use can help enrich information search, discovery and retrieval systems, gathering the potential knowledge distributed among its users. These components can prove to be a precious asset in promoting Collective Intelligence by knowledge sharing, encouraging the users to evaluate the resources found, so that the next users, when conducting a similar search, first obtain the most relevant results ("Search > Find > Evaluate > Understand> Share" cycle). If one includes in these systems a component of aggregation of sources, records and contents, preferably using intelligent algorithms for retrieval of related information, one can give users a "one stop search" point, rich in content, for being not only an aggregator of multiple sources, but also for its participatory/collaborative component, with possible gains in communities' creation and identification (users with common study or research interests). This article exposes some core concepts for an innovative bibliographic information search system model, where not only the document is the point of reference, but to a new extent, the user himself and all its surrounding. Taken, as a central point is the bibliographic collection of University of Aveiro's Libraries and the "ecosystem" of users and their use of it, added with, to the extent it is feasible, information from other sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The democratization of access to ICT and the emergence of platforms that focus on publishing content and the socialization of individuals gave birth to a new kind of information consumer, now also a producer. The result of this new role, commonly referred to as user-generated content, is a relatively recent phenomenon, but, thanks to the ubiquity of technology, it has spread, although the behavior of most individuals on the web is guided by other motivations, namely communication. The content produced is manifold, provides multiple levels of granularity, may be original, derivative or the result of a remix, is produced individually or cooperatively on platforms calling for the socialization, and in which few individuals are major producers and most sporadic contributors. The use of such content by the community also seems to follow a constant that translates into the consumption of a large number of content by few people and in a small popularity of many, which nevertheless does not cease to be a new possibility to achieve a diverse number of small niches. The problems of originality, privacy and quality are the most recurrently occur in the discussion of the other side of this coin. Libraries have been tentatively to accept these new producers, even opening their participation instruments of organization and information retrieval that historically were only his, but showing some difficulty in taking the role of producing, in co-operation, new content, than the traditional domain of meta-information. The discussion around issues such as organization, retrieval and preservation of this content is first started, and the management of these communities of users / producers. However, this is a reality that cannot be ignored and it is expected that this contribution will serve to launch the discussion and research library community in Portugal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than feedback from our users, helping us to answer their questions and expectations: that's the main benefit of blogs for the present day librarian especially when, for a proper feedback from the library users regarding activities and initiatives, Facebook does a much better job. Nevertheless -- and when talking about the sharing of specialized knowledge regarding reading promotion and literature --, blogs owned by booksellers, critics and editors are of great value. In the blogosphere content is king and die credibility of the one producing it is quite fundamental for the validation of such information. Supplied with a series of links that respect the above written, we shall redistribute reading suggestions -- as an example --, in a faster, more assertive and securer way. Taking this into consideration, one can relax regarding the purported death of these digital moleskins. They're only in a process of metamorphosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]