Avaliação do Acesso e Visualização da Informação em Repositórios Institucionais

Abstract

The idea of the Institutional Repository as academic memory device arose from the need to ensure the preservation of publications, promote the exchange of information and to give visibility to the production of the institutions, their researchers and funding agencies. In this context, this research aimed to investigate how the theoretical and pragmatic assumptions of Architecture, Accessibility and Usability of information are being used to facilitate access, search and visualization of information in Institutional Repositories. Methodologically this research is descriptive and bibliographical. Besides being an experimental research that makes use of the method of multiple case studies where each repository is analyzed separately and the final results are compared. With respect to data analysis approach, this research is characterized as qualitative and quantitative. To execute the research was taken as sample an institutional repository by each Brazilian capital. The evaluation result showed that some of the universities have problems to maintain the existing repository active, since they occasionally become unavailable. Assets repositories have accessibility, usability and user interaction problems, especially regarding search functionality, one of the most important in this type of system. Besides having some confusing navigation paths to reach the location of a document. This research enables a more global view of how the Brazilians’ repositories are promoting access to information and interaction with its users.