A biblioteca jurídica de órgãos públicos do Rio de Janeiro e o cidadão: percepção do bibliotecário sobre o acesso público à informação jurídica

Abstract

Analyzes the perception of law librarians of public bodies in the state of Rio de Janeiro on access to legal information by citizens of the state. It aims to analyze whether the law librarians see themselves as public agents who should provide services to citizens in general or only to the internal public of their institutions. Its specific objectives are to assess how law librarians perceive the use of their libraries, who they understand as users, the existence of actions by these law libraries to bring them closer to the nonspecialized public and identify whether the law librarians understand legal information as a type of information of interest to the general public. It conceptualizes legal information as mostly public information of social interest, in addition to making a historical journey on the right to information in Brazil and in the world. It also presents the six law libraries in the state sphere of Rio de Janeiro selected for the study, showing some regimental and functioning characteristics of these institutions. It draws a profile of the Brazilian law librarian, showing their most striking characteristics, addressing aspects of their educational background and sociodemographic characteristics. Methodologically, in addition to bibliographical and documental research, it performs data collection through semi-structured interviews with eight law librarians representing the six selected libraries. The selection of respondents tried to ensure the representativeness of the six libraries included in the study, as well as the positions held by the librarians. The analysis of the interviews was carried out question by question, making it possible to generate a systematic framework with a summary of results obtained. The interview approached the following themes: law librarians’ perception of use and users of their libraries; the availability of their work teams; the importance given to legal information by the interviewees; the work of law libraries and librarians in the promotion of citizens' access to legal information; the educational background of law librarians and personal data and social context of them. Data analyses indicate that librarians see citizens as legitimate users, but that their primary duty is to serve internal and specialized public. It points out that public law libraries in the State of Rio de Janeiro suffer from lack of physical space and human resources, lack of online presence and scarcity of activities to promote the interest of the non-specialized public in legal information. It also shows that most respondents believe that citizens are not interested in having access to legal information or, that they have only a utilitarian interest in the subject. Respondents and their institutions, in general, do not develop actions to promote literacy in legal information among the general population.