Communities and groups on WhatsApp as a prototype of information service to academic libraries

Abstract

This article introduces a prototype to carry out an information service by creating and managing communities and groups on WhatsApp, mainly focused on increasing the relationship between the academic community and the library that serves it. As a general objective, the article presents a proposal of a remote service to academic library through communities and groups on WhatsApp. The theoretical approach was based on the literature review, from the search strategy “remote AND service”, in Portuguese, on the Information Science Database of Brazil (BRAPCI). There were 13 papers, from 2003 to 2024, but just six articles were analyzed under pre-established exclusion criteria. After that, a language course at the Federal University of Ceará and the academic library that serves it since 1996 were presented as research environments. Functionalities of WhatsApp are then described based on a timeline of this application in the digital market. As a result, the work methodology and strategies adopted to create and manage communities and groups on WhatsApp are discussed, considering the possibilities of strategic planning, collection evaluation and selective dissemination of information. In conclusion, the remote service through WhatsApp redefines the role of the academic library from its virtual reference service, as well as the prototype introduced in this article can serve as a model for implementing that kind of information service in other libraries.