A Biblioteca Pública, o utilizador idoso e as políticas de infoinclusão

Abstract

This work focuses on Public Libraries and their relationship with aged users, reviewing the social and informational role of those libraries, based on the universal principles established by UNESCO, as well as the lack of public polices devoted to old population. The analysis of the services provided by the libraries enabled to conclude that doesn’t exist, from their side, an effective action directed to aged users, and that it is necessary to implement a planned action at national level, with the leadership of the organic sectors connected to libraries. The result of such national action would promote a change in the passive scenario played by public libraries in relation to the aged user. The development of this research started from a contextualization of Libraries and their historical and evolutive process, describing the library conceptual evolution, including its new role as info-inclusion agent. It describes also the public policies of info-inclusion in Portugal and the implementation process of the Public Libraries Network. The diagnosis of the existing situation in the Portuguese Public Libraries today and their relationship with the aged user has been accomplished through a survey sent to the public libraries. It focused also in a practical case study on the Biblioteca Municipal Almeida Garrett and reached to the knowledge of the aged user vision and its relationship with the library, also through a survey. Finally there are indicated some proposals in order to the implementation of info-inclusion policies devoted to the aged user and there are mentioned the measures that shall be undertaken for a successful work with aged users inside the libraries. Key