Abstract/Résumé/Resumen
This paper presents the results of a study designed to analyze the archives created and maintained in nine laboratories of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, a center of biological and biomedical research of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation dedicated to research, technological development, collections management, teaching and providing special health services. Taking as reference the field research and the interviews held with a group of twenty-two scientist, it considers the concepts, methods, techniques and practices used by the archival science to deal with the records produced by the scientific activity and attempts to observe the document creation, the documents typologies and the records thereby identified maintenance practices and uses. Based on an analyze that combines the archivist approach with tools of sociology of science, it is believed that the preserved by the archivist knowledge standards and instruments are now, submitted to a technical rationale that is aligned with empirical organizational practices which come up against a more
complex documental reality, leading the discipline to deny its foundations and stripping it of scientific status. The investigation reveals the diversity of document types produced by the scientific activity, the intense production of documents and the electronic document conservation, it highlights the function and the different ways the protocols books are recorded and used, stressing the significance of the Quality System in the management of the scientific research, particularly for the laboratories that have biological collections and that provide reference services. A view in favor of the confluence of goals between the contemporary science practices and the meaning of the records and archives management work is also presented.
