Uso de bibliotecas digitais de periódicos: um estudo comparativo do uso do Portal de Periódicos CAPES entre áreas do conhecimento

Abstract

Research on the use of digital libraries identify variations in information seeking behaviour of users in different areas of knowledge. However, most of the studies do not explain the factors that justify these differences in behavior. The present research investigated the use of the Capes Portal, the largest Digital Library of Scientific Journals in Brazil, by scholars in Humanities, Linguistics, Arts and Biological Sciences at theFederal University of Minas Gerais. The qualitative study used interviews and the critical incident technique to understand the reasons for different informational behaviors by researchers in the three areas considering, among other factors, the differences in the organization of the literature of each area. Five directors and 18 researchers of the units involved were interviewed. The characteristics of the scientific literature of each area, such kind of as in-formation resource, type of knowledge in the resources and type of relevance of the resources were investigated. Other factors included aspects of search behavior, the reasons for use and non-use of the Portal, barriers encoun-tered and rewards perceived. The analysis shows difference in behaviors and in the factors that affect the use and non use of the Portal among departments of the same area and among researchers in the same department. The results indicates that generic hypotheses for large areas of knowledge should not formulate and that the factors of use and non use are specific to each discipline.