Los servicios de orientación y asesoramiento a refugiados: el caso de Portugal y España

Abstract

Portuguese Public Libraries are today configured as cultural and educational services geared to the interests and needs of their diverse audiences, who seek to attract and retain loyalty through strategies and techniques of communication, motivation, training and education integrating new technologies of information and capable of responding to the enormous challenges of the current Information and Knowledge Society. In this context, a major role is played by the Educational Services, which function as cultural mediators between the library and its users. This important valence of non-formal education and training of the Libraries aggregates a multifaceted set of broad-spectrum actions: promotion of reading and comprehension skills, literacy development, and lifelong cultural training, ludic and pedagogical nature activities, particularly directed at children and young people, in addition to other integrated and/ or segmented initiatives, but always scheduled and planned according to the target audiences. The present article develops the synthetically stated theme, and in this context, focuses on the description, evaluation and analysis of the current national panorama of the Educational Services in the Portuguese Public Libraries.