From academic career to management of the UFMG Library System: actions to implement the UN 2030 Agenda: interview with Wellington Marçal de Carvalho

Abstract

I studied at the School of Information Science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. I joined in 2001 and graduated in 2004. I ended up graduating ad referendum, because I had applied for the career of technical-administrative in education, for UFMG itself, in 2003, and as I was approved in first place, for a unit of UFMG that is in the north of Minas Gerais, in Montes Claros, in a Unit that was called Núcleo de Ciências Agrárias and is now the Instituto de Ciências Agrárias, I graduated, completed the requirements for a bachelor's degree in Librarianship about six or seven months before my class and immediately took up and began working as a librarian at that UFMG unit, and I worked there for about four years. I was one of the people responsible for computerizing the collection of that library in the UFMG Library System, which is made up of 25 libraries. At that time, in 2004 and 2005, some of the libraries had not yet been computerized, so this was a priority task. I was trained to do this, and I worked for about a year, a year and a half, to complete this important stage for the daily life of the Library of the Agricultural Sciences Center. Later, I was transferred and worked at the University Library, in one of the sectors of the University Library in the Special Collections Division, specifically in the Faria Tavares Collection, where I was one of the people responsible for cataloging the collection. I worked in this sector for about two years and then I was invited to work at the UFMG Music School Library, where I worked for four years, also mainly responsible for cataloging a very specific part of the library's collection, which was music CDs. The four years at the Music Library were quite peculiar because, as you know, in the area of Library Science, the technical processing of the collection, which is what primarily and mainly makes up the collection in the area of music, is not the traditional book, monographs etc. There, I would say, the main part of the collection is sheet music, as well as vinyl records and other materials in this category. And as this is not a type of material that, I think, most librarians work with, it almost requires a new training so that you can think about and rationalize the day-to-day technical processing practices that are appropriate and correctly applied to this type of document. Around 2012, at the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013, I had already taken part in several other collegiate bodies at the University, for example, the Board of Directors, representing the University's administrative staff, having been elected to some other committees within the School of Music or in other parts of the University, and this made me realize that it would be interesting to take on another challenge. So, when in 2013 the election process began for the board of the University Library System, which is the body that technically coordinates the System's 25 libraries, I and a fellow librarian, at that time from the Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences, Anália Gandini Pontelo, formed a slate, built a work platform and registered for the election. We were elected, and in November 2013 I took on the most important position as librarian of the house at UFMG, which is the direction of the System for a period of two years. At the end of that first term, we ran for re-election and won the election again, leading the System for another two-year period. We began a second period at the helm of the System from 2015 to 2017, and around October/November 2017 I applied to become a lecturer in the Department of Information Science at the Federal University of Rondônia, on the Porto Velho Campus, and came first in the competition. So, to my surprise, the Federal de Rondônia appointed me and called me back much more quickly than I had imagined, and I had to decide to ask for a vacancy at UFMG after approximately 13 years as a librarian there and start the process of taking up and starting a teaching career in the Librarianship course, which at that institution runs in the evening. So the first semester I'll be teaching is 2018/1.