The education of law librarians in Brazil: an analysis of subjects on legal information at the Brazilian federal universities

This articled aims to analyze the subjects on legal information of library science courses at Brazilian federal universities to verify if they teach contents recommended by the literature. Methods: a comparison was made between the contents described in the menus of the subjects analyzed and a set of 14 topics considered recommended by national and international literature for the training of legal librarians. Results: five Brazilian universities have subjects focused on the legal information area. One of them offers more than one subject on the topic. All subjects are defined as optional and are not part of the mandatory course curriculum. The analyzed subjects were not able to cover the set of 14 topics recommended for the training of law librarians, covering them only partially. It is noticed that the subjects are more concerned with issues related to technical training and aspects related to user training and the use of legal information by non-specialized users, such as ordinary citizens, are generally absent. Conclusions: Brazilian librarians have great difficulty in specializing in the legal area. There is no significant offer of courses in law librarianship at the undergraduate level, nor in graduate courses. Training in the area is usually achieved through daily practice or continuing education activities, such as courses and events. Despite this, the number of subjects found and analyzed by the research demonstrates a small advance in the national scenario. The lack of standards or content guidelines for the training of this professional contributes to increasing the difficulties of offering formal education in the country.