Academic Library. Digital collection. Digital development collection policy. Digital book.

This dissertation discourses briefly about the history of the book, its supports and goals through
the centuries. It adresses the advent of Information and Communication Technologies and its
influence on the book and the reading. It discusses electronic books and analyzes their role as a writing support and source of information, as well as the benefits to the libraries that use them. Its main goal is to propose a policy of creation and development of digital book collections for university libraries. It explores, beginning with the literature, the process of creation and development of digital collections and its specifics. It investigates the criteria used by the librarians for the creation and development of the archive of digital books at the Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC). As a tool for collecting data, it utilized a semi-structured online survey applied to the librarians of the university. As a result, it states that the archive of print books at the libraries at UFC is notably larger than the archive of digital books, that the libraries of the university still don’t possess a specific document of orientation for the creation and development of digital collections, that the librarians are concerned with promoting the digital collections, but make little use of tools of monitoring the utilization and evaluation of satisfaction of its users. It concludes that the UFC Academic Library Network needs a policy of creation and development of digital archives that contributes to the maintenance of an updated archive that is adequate to the needs of its users.