Perceptions of librarians on indexing and indexing policies

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the perceptions that interviewed librarians expressed have pointed out about the process of indexing in the library in which they enact and the importance of formalizing an indexing policy in libraries. Thus it presents considerations by authors of library and information science on the indexing process and the functions and purposes of the indexing policy in libraries, and, in the sequence, an exploratory and descriptive study with a qualitative and quantitative approach of data obtained through structured interviews carried out with 23 librarians working in school, public and university libraries in Brazil, in October 2020, which showed that, about the indexing process, the librarians interviewed considered the needs of revocation and accuracy of the users of the libraries in which they enact, and also the composition of the collection of the library in terms of their areas of knowledge and the variety of their document types, but more than half of the interviewees do not have their decisions demarcated in an indexing policy that guides themselves and their colleagues, those who enact or will enact in the technical processing of the materials that enter the collection of the library, which makes the consistency in the levels of exhaustiveness and specificity and language used in the catalog unfeasible. However, even though the construction of an indexing policy does not prevail in their routines, since only 39.1% claimed to have a formalized indexing policy, one from a school library, one from a public library and seven from university libraries, the exposing their perceptions provides details of how the indexing process occurs in these types of libraries, which can be useful to professionals who wish to build indexing guidelines in libraries.