Acervos de livros das bibliotecas das instituições de ensino superior no Brasil: situação problemática e discussão de metodologia para seu diagnóstico permanente

The article presents: 1) the evolution of the studies on university libraries bibliographic collections in Brazil: the predicament, the data discrepancy with emphasis on books per student problem; 2) the methodology proposed by the author, following the pioneer study about university libraries on Education, in 1977, 3) the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte bibliographic collection (1980) evaluation; 4) the characterization of the Fundação Universidade do Amazonas bibliographic collection (1937); 5) and presents, with more details, the case study of the methodology applied in the Universidade de Brasília bibliographic collection analysis. The author describes the current situation of the libraries bibliographic collections in 52 Brazilian federal universities - with an average rate of 18,26 books per student - and the decreasing order of the bibliographic collection according its. geographical distribution. Finally, he describes the goals and the governmental arrangements to promote the bibliographic collections development – in order to help those less developed libraries to reach, in the next 5 years, a rate of, at lest, 10 volumes per stude