Library and Information Science Commons^™

“Windows” Of Time, Part Ii: Documenting Temporal And Embodied Epistemology In Musicians, Lynnsey K. Weissenberger

Proceedings from the Document Academy

As an extension to the earlier paper “Windows” of Time: Memory, Metaphor, and Storytelling as Documents, this paper examines how those documents both inform and are informed by temporal epistemology and embodied knowledge. They serve to document both temporal and embodied epistemology in the ongoing process of musical knowledge building, in music performance, as well as in teaching and transmission contexts. To illustrate in greater depth how these documents are situated between temporal and embodied knowledge, Irish traditional music examples are drawn from five renowned musicians as a kind of case study. A model representing the documents’ situation and …

Documentation, Information And The Animal Connection, Geir Grenersen

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The article elaborates on the informational relationship between nature, animals and humans. In traditional societies, nature and animals are rich sources of information and documentation, as seen in Sámi reindeer husbandry. Today, research on animal behaviour has shown that animals are capable of sophisticated communication with humans. In the field of documentation and information studies, Marcia Bates has made a significant contribution to this perspective. The article presents some of her concepts, and discusses their potential use in empirical research on documentation in the Sámi society.

A Note On Resilience Perspectives In Public Library Research: Paths Towards Research Agendas, Andreas Vårheim

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Resilience is the ability to cope with change. The concept of resilience originating in the natural sciences has been applied in a variety of disciplines, from physics through ecology and social ecology to psychology and cultural studies. In public library research, very little resilience research has been conducted. The derived concepts of community resilience and information resilience have been applied to a very limited extent, and primarily in relation to the role of public libraries in disasters and in information literacy initiatives toward refugees. This short paper provides a condensed overview of concepts of resilience, asserts that public libraries are …

Foundational Review On Information Seeking Behavior Of Legislators, Yousef T. Alfarhoud

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Legislators play a major role in the development of their countries. They suggest new bills and oversee the performance of the government. Legislators represent different parties, affiliations, and divisions.

Many studies have discussed the information seeking behavior of members of parliament. Information seeking behavior is a complex activity, requiring access to diverse information resources to deal with work, personal, and social information problems. In the case of legislators, such studies have discussed how members of parliament seek information that will eventually affect their decision-making process.

The aim of this review is to discuss the information needs and information seeking behavior …

From Fief To Clan: Boisot’S Information Space Model As A Documentary Theory For Cultural And Institutional Analysis, Lin Wang, Michael Buckland

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Max Boisot (1943-2011) and his Information Space (I-Space) model are introduced. The I-Space model characterized information flow on three dimensions (codification, abstraction, and diffusion). It can be seen as a document-based model. Boisot and colleagues identifies four types of institutional information practices (bureaucracies, markets, fiefs, and clans). Chinese economic reform in the 1980s is used as a case-study to demonstrate how document configuration and infrastructure is associated with cultural and institutional change. This echoes Suzanne Briet's assertion that documentation is a cultural technique.

The Attitudes Of Princess Nora University Students Towards Using Electronic Information Resources Of The Library, Latifah Alkahtani

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This study examined undergraduate students' use of and attitudes towards electronic information resources (EIR). It explored the relationship between the students' attitudes and their use of EIR of the Princess Nora University Library (PNUL). A descriptive as well as correlational survey design was adopted for the study. The findings revealed that the EIR of the academic library are still in the moderate or lower level of utilization, but overall students have shown high acceptance towards using these resources. The study established that there is a positive relationship between students’ attitudes and their use; however, the correlation coefficient is at the …

If It Looks Like A *Uck: A Provocation On B*D Words, Jodi Kearns, Brian C. O'Connor

Proceedings from the Document Academy

For some decades, we’ve been considering (and using) “b*d” words. Such a large part of the document space is made up of words; it seems necessary, upon occasion, to explore the crooked little paths and messy gutters occupied by some words. We invite your company on such a little exploration now.

Toward Augmented Document: Expressive Function Of Catalog, Caroline Courbieres, Sabine Roux, Benoît Berthou

Proceedings from the Document Academy

A library catalog constitutes a communicational tool which allows access to a collection of documents. It contributes to the circulation of knowledge by signaling and locating informational objects. This referencing consists in deconstructing/reconstructing documents according to principles of standardization: the actualized document is then decomposed into diverse characteristics. With the development of online public access catalog (OPAC), catalogs diffuse their own content beyond the documentary space that they are supposed to represent. Thus the communicational models specific to the bibliographic catalog must be deepened. If a catalog could appear as a documentary showcase, the possibility to comment on documents extends …

Gauguin's Savage Document Work: Understanding As Function, Tim Gorichanaz

Proceedings from the Document Academy

We tend to think of documents as things that provide answers, but documents can also provoke questions. This can be seen clearly in the study of art-making as document work, since the power of art is not in how it can represent reality, but how it can pose questions to reality. In this paper, I examine the work of 19th-century artist Paul Gauguin, which proceeded through iterative abstraction and productive reproduction. Gauguin's document work was a mode of questioning with the epistemic and communicative aim of understanding.

A Duty To Document, Marc Kosciejew

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Access to information is a bedrock principle of contemporary democratic governments and their public agencies and entities. Access to information depends upon these public institutions to document their activities and decisions. When public institutions do not document their activities and decisions, citizens’ right of access is ultimately denied. Public accountability and trust, in addition to institutional memory and the historical record, are undermined without the creation of appropriate records. Establishing and enforcing a duty to document helps promote accountability, openness, transparency, good governance, and public trust in public institutions. A duty to document should therefore be a fundamental component of …

Gatekeeping In Crisis Communication: An Exploration Of Leadership In The Press Conference, Carrie A. Boettcher

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Community leaders significantly influence the community's perception of and response to an emergency. This study explored the initial press conferences and communication efforts by community leaders as gatekeepers through an investigation of two large-scale disasters in the United States. Grounded in Patrick Wilson's call to a "reorientation toward the functional" and "to the point of the user," this study explores the initial communication efforts by Mayor Rudolf Giuliani immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, and by Mayor Ray Nagin in response to landfall of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, …

The Curious Case Of Floating Fixity (And Its Relationship To Authenticity), Kiersten F. Latham

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper is part reflection and part analysis. I use a personal document experience to illustrate the use of the holistic analysis framework of Document Phenomenology (Gorichanaz & Latham, 2016) to explore the notion of floating fixity and its relationship to authenticity.

A Discussion On Document Conceptualization, Niels W. Lund, Tim Gorichanaz, Kiersten F. Latham

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The authors discuss two conceptual frameworks of documents and documentation: Lund's complementarity theory of documentation; and Gorichanaz and Latham's framework of document phenomenology. The role of documentation in conceptualizing the document is discussed, and the notions of documentation and documental becoming are compared. Through the discussion, clarity is gained regarding both methods of conceptualization.

Transformations: From Social Media Campaign To Scholarly Paper, Hilary Yerbury, Ahmed Shahid

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper takes up the challenge given at the 2015 meeting of the Document Academy to explore relationships between the conference paper being presented and the social media campaign on which it was based. Using Genette’s notion of transtextuality, through which he shows that all published texts are networked to other texts, and Frohmann’s argument that our understanding of a document and the justification of that understanding are to be found in the “the stories we tell”, the report of the exploration describes the way that the relationships between the two emerge from the links created between the content of …

“Windows” Of Time: Memory, Metaphor, And Storytelling As Documents, Lynnsey K. Weissenberger

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper describes how alternative documents – memory, metaphor, and storytelling – negotiate musicians’ ongoing process of knowledge building. Examples are drawn from five music practitioners of different traditions around the world. In the contexts of teaching and learning, these documents provide evidence of changing epistemic perspectives in these music practitioners, and can be used to examine the complex relationships between time, knowledge building, and experience. Recent work in oral information and oral documents by Turner (2007; 2010), in addition to conceptual views of documents and documentation as early as Otlet (1934) and Briet (1951) and revisited by Buckland (1991; …

The Document: A Multiple Concept, Sabine Roux

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper discusses the concept of the document evolved throughout the 20th century in France, particularly through the writings of Robert Escarpit and Jean Meyriat. The document began as a simple notion and then gradually took on new meanings such that it is now seen as a construction of social values. Multiplicity is posited as a fundamental characteristic of the document, which affects its meaning, its interpretation and its social values. Like a rhizome, the document circulates in social spaces with multiple, nomadic associations through attribution, intention, meaning, interpretations and social values (political issues, artistic and aesthetic dimensions, economy, etc.) …

Jungles, Rabbit Holes, And Wonderlands: Comparing Conceptions Of Museality And Document, Kiersten F. Latham

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Following from the Document Academy 2012 presentation of a similar name, this article commits to paper the beginnings of an exploration between the concepts around document (from neo-documentation studies) and museality (from museum studies). It will serve as an initial mechanism for the exploration into the history, use, and comparative usefulness of the terms in order to blaze a path towards organizing their relationship and potential use in practice. The article is a purposefully open-ended exploration that encourages feedback and suggestions.

The Documentality Of Ethics – Codes Of Library Ethics As Support Of Professional Practice, Joacim Hansson

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This study analyzes codes of ethics, seen as documents, and their role in supporting the professional practice of librarianship. Theoretically it is placed within the scholarly discussion on the role and function of documents in various practices. Specific interest is directed towards the concept of ”performative documentality”. Empirically, the analysis is concentrated on one example, the Code of Ethics of the American Library Association (ALA). Both the immediate pre-history of this code, and its subsequent editions are described and analyzed in relation to the given theoretical position. Results show that the development ALA code of ethics corresponds to the ideas …

Sense In Documentary Reference: Documentation, Literature, And The Post-Documentary Perspective, Ronald E. Day

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Reference in modern documentation is largely governed by theories of evidential representation by documents, as the ‘contents’ of documents. In contrast, newer, what I call ‘post-documentary,’ technologies more emphasize the role of sense in the creation of reference. This paper investigates the implications upon the modernist category of ‘documentation’ and ‘document’ when this shift is taken into account. It also examines the implications upon ‘literature’ as a modernist category that evolved toward contesting modern documentation in the creation of evidence.

A Neo-Documentalist Lens For Exploring The Premises Of Disciplinary Knowledge Making, Lisa Börjesson, Nicolo Dell'unto, Isto Huvila, Carolina Larsson, Daniel Löwenborg, Bodil Petersson, Per Stenborg

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This article applies a neo-documentalist approach to explore disciplinary documentation and document practices, assumed to condition disciplinary knowledge-making. The aim is to show how conceptions and materialities of what counts as documentation and documents are intertwined with changing and persisting disciplinary and sub-disciplinary practices of producing information and knowledge, of knowing, and informing. A collective, multivocal autoethnographic method is used to obtain vignettes from five areas of activity in or related to archaeology. The ongoing digitization of archaeological investigation and documentation methods, and of archaeological materials, is used as a shared departure point in the vignettes, explaining how digitization influences …

The Physical, Mental And Social Dimensions Of Documents, Michael Buckland

Proceedings from the Document Academy

In the development of documentation studies at the University of Tromsø and the founding of the Document Academy it was asserted that one should view a document as having three complementary and simultaneous aspects: physical, mental, and social. These three document dimensions and relationships between them are discussed. Physicality is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for being a document, there must also be a mental angle, which, in turn, entails a social (cultural) angle. The physical disposition of documents is influenced by social controls. The inability of any one angle to fully characterize a document explains the role …

What Makes A Movie, Richard L. Anderson, Brian C. O'Connor

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Perhaps when the conditions of film projection will change, through technical progresses which promise to allow us to have access at will to films, it may be possible to walk leisurely, to wander, to loaf about, stroll and loiter …delighted to explore the ordered depth of a film, to appreciate a thousand details in a sequence while experiencing the unique character of the whole.

This quote from Baudry looked forward from the conclusion of our early piece “Access to Moving Image Documents,” published before the availability of digital computational tools. The digital environment has provided the stage for Baudry’s vision, …

How It All Started: 1996, The First Year Of Dokvit, Niels W. Lund

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This article describes in detail the first year of the Documentation Studies (Dokvit) program in Tromsø (1996) in attempt to offer an understanding of how Dokvit was part of the neo-documentation movement that began in the mid-90s with the rediscovery of Suzanne Briet and discussions on "What is a 'document'?" This article discusses how the Dokvit program was structured, including its curriculum, syllabus and teaching principles. In particular, it details the undergraduate student projects done this year and demonstrates how they were embedded within the historical and media situation of 1996. In conclusion, this article discusses how the experience of …

Tromsø And Documentation Studies: 20 Years Young (Editorial), Roswitha Skare, Kiersten F. Latham

Proceedings from the Document Academy

No abstract provided.

Chasing The Antelopes: A Personal Reflection, Bhuva Narayan

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This article is a personal reflection based on the author's experience of visiting the Ajanta Caves in India and what they mean to the author -- as documents, as evidence, and as social and cultural heritage.

From Transaction To Interaction: Socio-Materiality, Reliability And Transparency In An Age Of "Unbound Documents", Christopher W. Colwell

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Social media applications, such as Facebook, have been described as “documents without borders”. (Skare & Lund, 2014). In an Australian Government context these documents (which may also be records) exist outside the boundaries of the organisation to which they relate, and which created them. Unlike other documents in an organisational setting, they are “unbound” from the usual organisational processes of creation, management and control but still subject to relevant legislative and recordkeeping obligations (Hesling, 2014).

This paper explores initial themes from the first case study of a larger doctoral study into the perceptions of records in Australian Government agencies. Among …

Reconsidering Library Collections: Community Services As Documents, Deborah Turner

Proceedings from the Document Academy

In recognition of on-going change in how information becomes available, this study focuses on urban public librarian practices for meeting information needs, especially those of users who prefer to talk when obtaining information. Interview and focus group data reveal how libraries meet those needs including through library collaborations with community service agencies. Analysis of that data makes it possible to note that librarians manage relations with these agencies similar to how they manage traditional library collections. A subsequent discussion considers how this observation impacts LIS education and current understanding of documents before concluding with recommendations for professional practice and for …

A Documentologic Approach Of Herbarium: Documentary Anabiosis And Philogenetic Classification, Viviane Couzinet

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The Francophone school of the document specify the important role of the user to qualified an object as document. Following the work of Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet, Jean Meyriat have proposed a division between document by intention and document by attribution. These research are part of the development of the document science called Documentology. In this line and taking model on Botany the research presented here examines the herbaria as textual, iconic and physical documents in an evolutionary perspective. It defines the document dormancy as a latent state and documentary anabiosis as activation of objects that become documents. Botany …

Becoming Citizens: Dialogical Document Work In The Classroom Of The People’S Home, Anna Hampson Lundh, Mats Dolatkhah

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to analyse how a particular reading activity in a post-war Swedish comprehensive school, was part of the larger social and political project of the welfare state, and tied to the notion of good citizenship. Thereby, and secondly, the paper aims to illustrate how dialogical document theory enables the study of reading, and possibly other types of document work and practices. The analysis of a speech by a teacher about what can be learnt from a short story during a Swedish lesson in a primary school in 1968 illustrates how document work such …

Familiar Categories And Documentary Forms: Readers’ Perspectives, Amanda Cossham

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper presents an evaluation of the ways in which three different groups of readers (recordkeepers, teachers and secondary school students) categorise documents. This is used to show how they understand documents, documentary forms and genre. Drawing on a card sorting activity conducted around a set of cards of documents related to The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, the paper discusses the significance of familiar categories as cultural markers (closely linked to particular rhetorical genres). It considers the impact of domain knowledge on the process of sorting and naming of categories, and compares the approaches taken by participants with those of …