Research Information:FOCUS ON LATIN AMERICA
sleeping giant O
Waking a
Student numbers in Brazil – and the scholarly publishing industry – are growing in leaps and bounds, writes Nicola Bacon
ne of the most vibrant and culturally electric countries in the world, Brazil sits at the heart of Latin America, which is also true of its position within higher education across the region. According to most recent census results from Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira (INEP), the number of undergraduate students in Brazil has increased from 1.8 million in 2000 to approximately 7.3 million in 2014.
There are more than 2,600 higher education institutions in Brazil, made up of universities, public and private university centres and higher education schools. There are 286 public institutions that are funded by the government and produce the majority of research. Its huge, rapidly-growing private sector is predominantly aimed at the emerging middle-class, distance learning and vocational education students. Seventeen institutions from the country were present in this year’s top 800 in the Times Higher Education world university rankings, including Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), which has campuses in two Brazilian cities and is considered one of the best private universities in the country. The PUCRS Main Library Irmão José Otão is located in Porto Alegre, and is one of the most technologically advanced libraries in Latin America. Occupying an area of 21,000 square meters, it consists of 14 floors and is visited on average by 1,800 people daily. The library has a collection of more than 960,000 physical items including books, dissertations and theses, print journals and multimedia materials. They provide digital access to more than 1.4 million electronic documents, including hundreds of thousands of books, periodicals and many specialist databases. Since the beginning of the decade, the university has seen a significant
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reduction in the purchase of printed content and a gradual increase in electronic materials for online access.
Brazil is faced with education budgets being slashed due to the poor economic outlook. Supply and demand has grown for electronic resources, since the Ministry of Education allowed the use of electronic format; however, the financial means to procure and obtain them hasn’t grown at the same rate. Additionally, an important regional issue has been the provision of resources – especially textbooks – in an electronic format in local language. The university obtains many resources in the local language from domestic suppliers, but it pales in comparison to the vast
Brazil is faced with education budgets being slashed
array of resources available in English. Further, domestic suppliers have multiple business models, which can create some difficulty for the library when purchasing their resources; this is an issue that they don’t have with their international suppliers, who have set business models in place.
PUCRS began working with ProQuest in 1997 to provide essential resources for students. They have been using a variety of business, scientific, periodical and newspaper databases including ProQuest Central, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, Latin American Newsstand and Periodical Archive Online as well as the ever growing ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global database. Michelangelo Viana, main library system coordinator librarian, said: ‘Since we started using the ProQuest products, they have
The library of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul
become important sources of consultation. It’s primarily full-text content supports the academic and scientific research at the university. It is one of the few resources that is constantly renewed by its quality, scope and continuous improvement.’
According to César Augusto Mazzillo, library director, as the education system continues to grow, the future of the library will also develop, and Brazilian libraries will be offering more and more information electronically. The library will no longer be an exclusive place to search and access information; it will also become a place of knowledge production.
Mazzillo believes the key areas of the library they will focus on and develop the most will be focused on access, ubiquitous access, access in real time and by demand; user autonomy and information perceived as information, irrespective of its medium. The education system in Brazil is formed of two very separate entities: the university libraries and public/school libraries. The former receives investment in the automation of its systems and equipment, as well as the content it purchases. However, public and school libraries are not afforded the same luxury, and receive little investment or support. This, according to Viana, has the knock-on effect of hindering the advancement of the elementary and high school students within the system.
Nicola Bacon is PR manager for EMEALA at ProQuest DECEMBER 2015/JANUARY 2016 Research Information 21
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