Scientific production on subject treatment of information in Library Schools’ programs of Mercosul: a preliminary analysis

Abstract

The educational discussions on subject treatment of information that have been taking place since 1996 during the annual meetings of the Mercosul Library Schools, have encouraged the first round of analysis of the disciplines’ contents and bibliographies. Such an investigation showed a wide variety of subject treatment of information theoretical influences among the distinct Library Schools. It leaded to the need of investigating the scientific production of the subject treatment of  information professors in order: a) to verify the subject coherence between the bibliography used by docents in their pedagogical practices, and
their own scientific production; b) to analyze their scientific contribution through their scientific production; c) to identify subject treatment of information invisible colleges at the Mercosul area; d) to contribute to the task force studies on
information organization and retrieval of the Mercosul Library Schools Group. This literature revision on subject treatment of information education at Mercosul, as well as on scientific production, has supported the data collecting among professors from 28 Library Schools, which obtained a return of 68.85% of that universe. Results showed that only 12 professors, from 5 universities are responsible for 91.57% of the whole scientific production (whole books, book
chapters, articles in journals and conference proceedings). It was also verified a relative balance among the number of proceedings, articles and monographic publications (books and chapters) whose medium life is around 6 years
(considered a good level, by the area standards). When comparing the individual bibliographies used by the disciplines’ professors with the bibliography of their own scientific production, it was verified that only 13.25% of the items in the latter were present in the disciplines’ bibliographies. In conclusion, these results reveal that the subject treatment of information scientific production of Mercosul Library Schools has mainly been the output of a small group of scholars, mostly PhD professors from universities which offer both undergraduate and graduate (masters´ and doctorate´ s degrees) programs. Furthermore, they reveal that the presence of such production as research source in the individual bibliographies of the area disciplines is still modest. Such results demonstrate the urgent need to promote scientific exchange and partnership programs among subject treatment of information professors at the Mercosul area, in order to encourage them to form invisible colleges, as well as to make their scientific production more visible to the Educational environment.