INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE IN INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES: an analysis at the Federal Universities of the Northeast Region
Information and Technology. Information Architecture. Institutional repositories. Digital repositories.
This study seeks to analyze, from the perspective of the Information Architecture, how the digital information that constitutes the most varied types of scientific works have been presented / structured to the users of Institutional Repositories. The corpus of analysis was delimited from a cut that reaches the Federal Universities of the Northeast Region. The general objective of this research is: To investigate interfaces of the Institutional Repositories of the Federal Universities of the Northeast Region, based on the theoretical and methodological assumptions of the Information Architecture (AI). And as specific objectives: a) Map the IR of the Federal Universities of the NE; b) Describe and analyze the elements of the Information Architecture present in the chosen sample; c) Develop a manual based on the observations made on the IR pages of the sample, suggesting modifications for the improvement of IR. The data were collected through the access to the IR pages of the mentioned universities, the information acquired was analyzed based on the Information Architecture systems, we use the Top-Down Information Architecture model from top to bottom. We also analyzed the organization, navigation, labeling and search systems from the perspective of Rosenfeld, Morville and Arango (2015). The result of the analysis showed that all IRs have problems in the AI systems, especially regarding search functionality, one of the most important in this type of system. We present, as a product of this research, a manual with suggestions for improvement in navigation systems, labeling, organization and search for Information Architecture in Institutional Repositories.