Diagnóstico das políticas de gestão e preservação de obras raras e históricas nas bibliotecas universitária federais do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

This work presents a historical overview of university libraries, memory, heritage and rare works. It also presents notions about management, preservation and conservation of collections. It brings the rare and historical book as a fundamental support of cultural heritage for society and it also brings the university library as a place of memory, since it can be characterized as the guardian of knowledge, not in the sense of keeping the heritage produced in the country. past, but to enable access to the past and preserve memory. The work consists of a qualitative and descriptive research and a semi-structured questionnaire was applied in the five Library Systems of the Federal Universities of Rio Grande do Sul, through google forms. The main objective of the research is to investigate the existence of management and preservation policies for collections considered rare and historical in the libraries of the Federal Universities of Rio Grande do Sul, as well as to understand such policies if they use them. The study revealed that only one Library System has policies for the management and preservation of rare and historic collections regulated, while the others are in the process of elaboration or regulation thereof. Another result of the study was that, with the exception of one institution, the others report that it is difficult to work with this type of collection due to the lack of trained human resources, insufficient financial resources and lack of adequate storage space. Finally, it is suggested that library systems that do not have such policies should develop one so that collections of rare and historic works do not become a mere heap of dusty old and old books stored on the shelves of a library.