Literature/1997/Buckland


 * Reprinted in Hahn, T. B. & M. Buckland, eds. (1998). Historical Studies in Information Science. Medford, NJ: Information Today. pp. 215-220. This text may vary slightly from the published version.
 * http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/whatdoc.html

Authors

 * School of Information Management & Systems, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
 * E-mail: buckland@sims.berkeley.edu

Abstract
Ordinarily the word "document" denotes a textual record. Increasingly sophisticated attempts to provide access to the rapidly growing quantity of available documents raised questions about which should be considered a "document". The answer is important for any definition of the scope of Information Science. Paul Otlet and others developed a functional view of "document" and discussed whether, for example, sculpture, museum objects, and live animals, could be considered "documents". Suzanne Briet equated "document" with organized physical evidence. These ideas appear to resemble notions of "material culture" in cultural anthropology and "object-as-sign" in semiotics. Others, especially in the USA (e.g. Jesse Shera and Louis Shores) took a narrower view. New digital technology renews old questions and also old confusions between medium, message, and meaning.

Excerpts

 * Briet enumerates six objects and asks if each is a document.
 * Object --- Document?
 * Star in sky -- No
 * Photo of star -- Yes
 * Stone in river -- No
 * Stone in museum -- Yes
 * Animal in wild -- No
 * Animal in zoo -- Yes

Chronology

 * Buckland, Michael. (1995). "The Centenary of 'Madame Documentation': Suzanne Briet, 1894-1989," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, vol. 46, no. 3 (April 1995): 235-237.
 * http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/brietjas.html (draft)
 * Buckland, M. K. & R. Day. "The semiotics of 'document'." In the proceedings of the Fifth Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, Berkeley, 1994. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
 * Buckland, M. K. (1991). "Information retrieval of more than text," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42, 586-588.
 * Buckland, M. K. & R. Day. "The semiotics of 'document'." In the proceedings of the Fifth Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, Berkeley, 1994. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
 * Buckland, M. K. (1991). "Information retrieval of more than text," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42, 586-588.