by Niels Windfeld Lund, University of Troms¿, Norway
paper to the DOCAM '03 conference, SIMS, UC-Berkeley Aug.13-15 2003
Documentation Science has formally
been practiced since 1996 at The University of Tromsoe in Norway. The
department has a group of 7 faculty, Academic programs on BA-,MA- and Ph.D.
levels, graduated candidates, students and some grants in Documentation
Science. This conference is a result of this practice especially by making the
document the main issue of a conference.
An academic program or discipline
does not come out of nothing. There are always some political and social
circumstances which make it reasonable for the government and the academic institutions
to establish programs and finance the faculty etc.
In this case, it were three things. One political/cultural issue was the lack of professional librarians willing to take positions in Northern Norway. That was an argument for making an education in librarianship in the North. Secondly there was an interest among Norwegian librarians to get a "real" academic program for librarians in order to get a scientific foundation for their profession leading to an argument for a program at the University of Tromsoe. Lastly there was the new Act of legal deposit in Norway from 1989, which gave the main arguments for a proposal of a program in Documentation Science instead of the usual kind of Academic programs for librarians, programs in Library and Information Science, aka LIS. The new act of legal deposit makes it obligatory that all publications in Norway be delivered to the National Library no matter what kind of media is used in the publications. The consequence of this rule was that the National Library should not only handle the usual library material like printed books, journals and newspapers, but also film, photographs, audiotapes and last but not least all the new digital publications like cd-rom, floppy-discs, dvd and all the net-based documents.
This problem was in fact not new,
neither for the rest of the library world, nor for the society in general.
Actually it was more a kind of return to a
disciplinary tradition, which the anglo-american library world left in 1968,
when the American Documentation Institute changed into the American Society for
Information Science. [1]
Many similar departments in the latin and german world, including France, Spain, Germany etc., still use the notion of documentation in their naming of their disciplines. The conceptualization of this disciplinary tradition is very much in debt to one person, the Belgian scholar Paul Otlet who worked in theory and practice with these issues in the beginning of the 20th century. [2] His main treatise is " documentation"
In an essay, Otlet described the Science of bibliography in the following way:
The Science of bibliography
can be defined as that science, whose object of study is all questions common
to different kinds of documents: production, physical manufacture,
distribution, inventory, statistics, preservation and use of bibliographic
documents; that is to say, everything which deals with editing, printing,
publishing, bookselling, bibliography, and library economy. The scope of this
science extends to all written or ilustrated documents which are similar in
nature to books: printed or manuscript literary works, books, brochures,
journal articles, news reports, published or manuscript archives, maps, plans,
charts, schemas, ideograms, diagrams, original or reproductions of drawings,
and photographs of real objects. The practical aim of the Science of
bibliography is the organisation of documentation on an increasingly
comprehensive basis in an increasingly practical way in order to achieve for
the intellectual worker the ideal of a "machine for exploring time and
space[3]
I think that this definition and practical aim can still stand for the LIS today. Otlet said further :
In a
general way, one can say that documents of all kinds, the production of which
began centuries ago and continues unceasingly in all countries, are registering or have registered, day
by day, all that has been transmitted from generation to generation and from
place to place. As a whole, then, documents form the graphic memory of
humanity, the physical body of knowledge.
[4]
and
The
aim of Documentation is rapidly and easily to provide all researchers, whatever
their level of knowledge or culture, both with the materials of study which
represent the totality of human experience and with detailed information on
particular points. In scientific, technical, historical, social and industrial
matters, it is the systematically organised intermediary between the public and
documents, between those who read and those who write. It provides recorded
information, that is, the distribution of information by the book, periodical,
newspaper, and photographic image.[5]
In these quotations from Otlet one might see why the discipline turned into Information Science in the 1960ties. By the computer it looked like if it was possible to gather almost all recorded information into one place, the computer. The computer could be the realization of the "Universal book" which Otlet is speaking of:
Individual publications will
continue to appear quite independently of each other. They will retain their
characteristics of being separate, ideosyncratic and poorly related to the
whole body of knowledge itself. But paralleling the innumerable books published
on the subject-matter of each discipline, will be drawn up the "Universal
Book" of that discipline[6]
To some extent, one can see the databases and the whole Internet as universal books, but the diversity continues by the very different formats and criteria for all these attempts to gather all documented knowledge, especially when you collect writings together with images and soundrecording documents. It is this situation which makes it relevant to still talk about documents. For Otlet documents was primarily a matter of printed documents, "the graphic memory of humanity, the physical body of knowledge". If we go a little bit further in the history of documentation and look upon the concept of document and documentation in the work by the French scholar Suzanne Briet (" Madame Documentation ") " Qu'est-ce que la documentation ? " from 1951 we get the following proposal for a definition of a document:
" all concrete or
symbolic indexial signs, preserved or recorded toward the ends of representing,
of reconstituting, or of proving a physical or intellectual phenomenon "[7]
By this definition one can also recognize an animal captured and placed in a zoo as a document and go beyond the digital sphere into the physical space. Both Otlet and Briet talk about memory, preservation and recording in relation to documents. One might say that in order to be a document, the phenomenon needs to have some kind of physical permanence, enable to function as a memory and to be storable.
Briet talks about document as representation as well as proof and relates it to the latin heritage of the word document. She does not go into detail about this heritage, but if one goes a little bit further into the history of the word document, it is possible to trace back some of the different conceptional traditions of the word document and its derivations.
In the historical dictionary of
the French language, it is told that the word document and its latin
predecessor, documentum, in the
beginning did not have the modern mening as a writing proving or informing something
for somebody as Otlet, Briet and many other are talking about. Instead it was
close related to teaching. In 1214 the latin form documentum is registrered as
meaning : example, model, lecture, teaching and demonstration. In french the
word: document meant untill the 17th
century only "ce qui sert ˆ instruire, enseignement,
lecon"[8] When you read a dictionary of French of the 15th century,
a document was only defined as "enseignement, lecon"[9] An oral lecture was in itself the prototype of a document.
This tradition is almost forgotten today.
Besides the bibliographic tradition of document, today a document is often related either to the legal system or to Science. The legal conception of the document being a proof goes not, as many probably would guess back to the Antique, but it goes only back to the late 17th. century. According to the historical dictionary, it is first found in 1690 in the combination of "titres et documents". In this respect it means : " Žcrit servant de preuve ou de renseignement". In this short definition, some very important features of this tradition and a number of other traditions are shown. First of all, the document is primarily a written object. Writing has from the late 17th century and onwards had a kind of hegemonic status in relation to different types of documents. Writing is something which can be trusted compared to other kinds of documents. Secondly, the document is a matter of proof, a question of whether it is true or not. The crucial question is how you can be sure that the documents are true and not false. Many trials in the courts are and have been dealing exactly with this issue.
Thirdly the document is also an issue of "renseignement" of delivering information. It is a piece of writing which tells you something. These three characteristics are very typical for the whole bureaucratic state, which expanded in the 2nd half of the 17th century in connection with the European absolutism.
Following the legal tradition, one can say that the positivistic and empirical oriented science developed a new tradition of documentation, meaning the objective proof of scientific results. It was not before during the late 19th. century that science became a question of empirical proof and need the notion of document like "appuyer (une thŽse) par des documents" (1876)[10]. The quality of the scientific work depended very much on the documentation, which the researcher could present for his colleagues and the public. It was not enough to make a good story or to make good arguments without empirical evidence. The scientists must show true knowledge by experiments and write documents demonstrating that the researcher are right in his arguments and can be trusted. In each discipline one has different criteria for documentation. In historical studies one saw an increase of source critique compared to the synthetic story telling the history.
At the turn of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, a new conceptual tradition emerged within the "new" media like movies, photography, radio etc. It was the documentary tradition.[11] By a documentary, you mean a mass media production either on television, on movie, in radio or in books, which is about real life in contrast to fiction creating an imaginary world. That means that it came simultaneously with the development of the new media, photography, moving pictures, radio, television etc. Documentaries have to be viewed in relation to fiction on television, in movies etc. The documentaries are true stories in contrast to fictive stories. In this way it is also following the demand for truth like the legal and scientific traditions for using the notion of document.
At last I will mention one of the new traditions for using the word document, the digital tradition from the 1970ties. When you are using a word processing program, you create a document. At the same time it is almost a contradiction to the classic bibliographic tradition in which a document is a physical object by the fact that you cannot physically grasp on a digital document, but only identify by the graphics on the screen. When you are producing a document on the computer, it is a document independent of whether your writing or drawing is true or not. In a digital environment, the document is a concept for the discrete unit, you need in order to perceive it as something special which you need to read, view or listen to.
From this one may conclude that a document need not to be a relative permanent physical object, but according to the oldest tradition recognizing a lecture as a document, it can also be a speech and a gestural movement with your arms or legs. It does not need to be a matter of remembering or preserving something. It can be a matter of just showing something. At the same time it looks like if one needs the notion of document in order to cope with a general need of discreteness or boundaries, enabling to perceive a phenomenon.
As mentioned earlier the notion of
document goes back to the latin words DOCUMEN and DOCUMENTUM. [12] Documen or doci stems from doceo plus men and means a
warning, caution, an example or instance. If we see on documentum, it can be
seperated into the verb DOCEO and the suffix MENTUM. According to the
dictionary it has two original meanings. [13] It means both : an example (serving as a precedent, warning, instruction, etc.) as
well as Instruction and/or teaching.
It shows rather clearly the same as
the ordinary english word: Document means. Document can both mean the result,
an example, of an activity like teaching or instruction and the teaching/instruction
in itself as a process. The suffix means both a result and means.
Further on if one looks upon doctus which also stems from Doceo, you
get pple. of doceo.
When you continue to see what
Doceo means according to the Oxford dictionary, you see a number of meanings,
five different meanings.[14] They are
- to tell, inform ( a person of a
fact , etc.)
- to instruct (an advocate)
- to demonstrate, show (by
argument or other means)
- to teach a person instruct in
b.(w.inf.) to teach a person to do something, (also w. indir. command)
c(w.indir.qu.) d. (absol) to act as a teacher , teach
- to produce a play
If we still look on the conceptual traditions, it is interesting to note that the derivation of the word document, documentation, appears not before in the 19th century as "action de rŽunir de documents" which clearly leads to the bibliographic tradition. [15] A concept for the very process of making a document you see at the first time in 1755 as "documenter" as a verb meaning to teach, to make a lecture and later in 1870ties meaning to support a thesis or an organisation with (written) documents. [16]
Recent discussions on the notion of document has not paid very much attention to the notion of documentation.[17] It may be important to make clear whether one is talking about documentation as the process of making the document, a pre-document conception of documentation or the process of organizing the already made documents, a post-document conception.
We have general theories about communication telling us, that human beings have to communicate with each other in order to live. The word communication derives from the latin word communicare, which means to share something with others. Communication focus on the fact that you are not alone in the world, but you are together with a least one more person, in order to live a social life and to continue human life on earth. The word documentation can be seen as a complementary notion focusing on the means you are using instead of the fact of being more than one. One might call it an instrumental theory of communication and keep the notion of communication, but I think it is better to draw the consequence of the different perspective and call it a theory of documentation.
The process of documentation can be seen as constituted by four
elements: producers, instruments, modes, and documents. There is always at
least one human being as the producer of a document. One cannot have a document
without a human being involved. Besides a person, some kind of instrument is
needed with which to make the document.
The body can be such an instrument when the organ of speech or the
fingers, for example, are used, but a document cannot be created without a
minimum of means, without instruments. Next, the persons producing the document
always use the means, the instruments, in certain ways.
Such ways often become traditions for making specific kinds of
documents.
When a human being uses an instrument in a specific way, the result of this activity is a document.
In order to make a documentation
analysis, one needs to an analytical framework of interrelated concepts.
Beside the two concepts, documentation and document, there is no concept
for parts of the document by means of which one might make a more detailed
analysis of the document. Inspired by the verb doceo, I suggest the word DOCEME
to
describe any part of a document, anything that can be identified and isolated
analytically as part of the documentation process or the resulting document. In
this way one will have a set of three analytical concepts similar to the
wellknown concepts of genre, text, and sign. These three concepts have the
important distinction of being developed in relation to each other and of
allowing us to relate analyses of process and product.
Forms of documentation is a general analytical category to designate
distinctive modes of documentation that by repetition have become traditions of
documentation. According to this definition, the notion of form of
documentation comes close to what is usually conceived of as a genre.
The document results from a process of documentation. It is an
analytical category to be used in examining specific results of the processes
of documentation. An article in a fashion magazine is a document. It is the
result of a process in which the reporter has used words as well as photographs
to show, to document, the new fashions. But the fashion show itself can also be
conceived as a document that uses living models, the creations themselves, and
special equipment for making a show such as a stage, lights, music etc. It
demonstrates (doceo) the fashion by means of models, light and music (mentum). Later the creations
themselves can be considered as a document, perhaps the most important document
in the complex of fashion documents. One might ask: why do I prefer to use the
notion of document instead of the more convenient notion of text.
Etymologically, text means something woven. Words are woven together in
a meaningful way resulting in a meaningful totality. When one documents
something, one is also weaving elements together, but in saying that one
documents something instead of making a text, one emphasizes the means being
used to show something. Through the three different documents, the article
about the show, the show itself, and the creations being shown, fashion is
documented in three different ways using different means. In a comparative
analysis of all three documents, one might consider how the different means
contribute to the totality of each document, but also how the documents support
each other.
Finally one has the doceme as an analytical category for a
more detailed analysis of the document. A doceme is defined as a part of a
document. A doceme can never be something in itself. A photograph can be a
document in itself, but as a part of an article, as an illustration, it is one
of the docemes of the article. An article can be a document in which two different
instruments have been used, writing and photography. As practical activities,
the actual writing down and the shooting with the camera are both parts of the
total process of documentation resulting in the text and illustration, together
forming the article as a whole document. They are also both docemes from a
processual perspective in the same way as the resulting text and illustration.
Another example of a doceme, which can never exist outside a document, is the
division of a book into a number of different parts and chapters. For many, the
doceme might look like the semiotic notion of sign, just as the document might
be considered similar to the notion of text. But while a sign can be a
meaningful totality on its own, a doceme is only meaningful as part of a document and never
alone.
Having defined all three analytical levels by three closely related
conceptsÑdocumentation, document, and docemeÑone can analyze the process of
documentation as well as the resulting documents from a comparative as well as
a complementary perspective. It is possible to compare different forms of
documentation as well as different docemes. It is also be possible to analyze
the material, social and mental aspects of the documentation process on all
three levels. When the material aspects change, for instance there is a
substitution of instruments used in the process of documentation, this has
consequences for the social and the mental aspects as well. If two people are
e-mailing each other instead of talking together, the social relationship will
change as well as the way they are thinking of each other. But changes in the
mental structures and social relationships may also have an impact on the
material aspects. From a complementary perspective, it is not a matter of making
a hierachy of more or less fundamental features of the world, but a question of
recognizing the equal importance of and need for all three aspects in human
life.
Roland Barthes said in 1964 that in a very far future, if at all, a new discipline might emerge as a conjunction of semiology and taxonomy:
These images, of the sheet of paper as well of as of the waves, enable us to emphasize a fact which is of utmost importance for the future of semiological analysis: that language is the domain of articulations, and the meaning is the above all a cutting-out of shapes. It follows that the future task of semiology is far less to establish lexicons of objects than to rediscover the articulations which men impose on reality; looking into the distant and perhaps ideal future, we might say that semiology and taxonomy, although they are not born, are perhaps meant to be merged into a new science, arthrology, namely, the science of apportientment .[18]
One might say that Documentation is the realization of that kind of
science since it is a question of cutting-out and divide the totality of
articulations into discrete units.
Barthes, Roland (1964/67)
Briet. Suzanne (1951)
Dictionnaire Historique de la langue francaise (1992) : Paris :Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1992
Otlet, Paul (1903). The Science of bibliography and documentation. In W.B. Rayward (Ed. and Trans.) (1990): International organisation and dissimination of knowledge : Selected essays of Paul Otlet. FID, Amsterdam : Elsevier, 1990
Farcas-Conn, Irene S. (1990) From Documentation to Information Science. The beginnings and Early development of the American Documentation Institute - American Society for Information Science.New York:Greenwood Press, 1990
[1] Farcas-Conn, Irene S. (1990)
[2] Rayward, W. Boyd
[3]Otlet, Paul (1903/1990, p.85f)
[4] Otlet, Paul (1907) p. 105
[5] ibid. p. 105-6
[6] ibid p.83
[7] Briet, Suzanne (1951) translation by Ron Day
[8] Dictionnaire historique p. 620
[9] Dictionnaire de la Langue Francaise du Seizieme Siecle (1934) p.239
[10] Dictionnaire Historique de la langue francaise (1992) p. 620
[11] see
[12] Oxford Dictionanry of Latin p. 568
[13] ibid. p.568f.
[14] ibid p.568
[15] Dictionnaire historique de la langue francaise (1992) p. 620
[16] ibid.
[17] Buckland, Brown and Duguid, Levy
[18] Barthes, Roland: Elements of Semiology p. 57