Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Rethinking The Potential Of Documentation Of Culture As A Data Gathering Practice, Tomasz Umerle

Proceedings from the Document Academy

In this article, I examine the documentation of culture (DoC). This is the practice of gathering and producing the information and data relevant to intangible cultural phenomena. DoC is generally practiced by teams of documentalists generally outside GLAM institutions (i.e., galleries, libraries, archives and museums). As such, it differs from the preservation and description of concrete objects of cultural heritage done within those institutions. I examine how DoC finds it increasingly difficult to clearly define and communicate its role: a) in relation to LIS; b) to the broader academic community; and c) in digital age of information overload. In this …

The Value And Problems Of Digital Preservation For Historical Documents In China, Yongsheng Chen, Huanning Su

Proceedings from the Document Academy

China has been taking on large-scale digitization of historical documents. This paper summarizes four advantages of the digital preservation of historical documents from the practice of Chinese archives. First, it is good for protecting the originals; second, it makes the historical documents more convenient to use; third, it lays a resource foundation for the construction of digital archives; last, it is beneficial for utilizing historical documents. This paper also points out problems in China's approach to the digital preservation of historical documents. First, it has been proceeding without a plan. Such a plan should be created by following the Value …

On The Borders Of The Document: Trip To Turakia, Sabine Roux, Caroline Courbieres

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Analysis of documentary boundaries through the study of a set of documents related to the French Theater Company Turak. We describe as artistic documents the different documents that circulate during the creation of a play. There is an initial documentary collection comprised of the documentation for the performance on which the company relies to stage the play itself. At different stages of artistic creation, the company designs documents that are useful for the pursuit of creative reflection. The theater company also develops documents aimed at promoting the play for professionals and the public. Finally, the spectators also produce many documents …

Representativity And Complementarity In Tai Chi As Embodied Documentation, Joacim Hansson

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The aim of this paper is to investigate what happens if we leave the criteria of materiality and permanence behind in the study of documents. How far can we stretch the definition of a document or define a documentation process in a situation where neither the originary fact, or object, nor that by which this is represented is material or permanent? Empirically, the paper is constructed as a case study of the traditional Chinese practice of Tai Chi and presents a formulation of the Tai Chi form as an immaterial document and Tai Chi pratice as a doumentation process. The …

[For The System, Alternate Title: If It Sort Of Looks Like A Duck: Reflecting On Bad Photographs And Chains Of Custody], Jodi Kearns, Brian C. O'Connor

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Though the system will not permit it, our abstract is an out-of-focus photograph of ducks at 1900 pixels wide and black and white, which is approximately 20% the size of the original color photograph we use for our title. By most technical standards, it is a bad picture. Straightening the horizon, cropping the image to emphasize the two foremost ducks, brightening the image to highlight the feet, and adding a caption that indicates activity might yield a “better” picture for some viewers. This piece captures nearly 20 years of conversations about good and bad pictures, and continues the conversation from …

Training The Masses In “Informational Awareness”, Carol Choksy

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The frameworks for “information literacy” and “media literacy” require a complex understanding of authority and context and neglect the most basic of ideas, that all sources have a perspective. Whether that perspective is useful or not is dependent upon its purpose. If a student is researching conspiracy theories, they will be looking at a vast array of perspectives. If a student is researching active measures, they will be looking at an even broader array. Beyond learning to determine whether a news article is “Fake News” students must be able to filter the snippets of information that inundate them on a …

Before The Antelope: Robert Pagès On Documents, Michael K. Buckland

Proceedings from the Document Academy

In 1951 Suzanne Briet wrote, with minimal explanation, that an antelope could become a document. In 1948 Robert Pagès (1919-2007) published an explanation of the same and related ideas. Textual and other graphic documents are about something, hence descriptive and derived. Animals and other objects are informative because they are illustrative of themselves either as specimens of a class (tokens of a type) or simply as particular individuals (“autodocuments”). Pagès’ career and ideas are briefly discussed.

Promoting Trustworthiness And Discoverability In An S-Town Of Osn Documents, Laurie J. Bonnici

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The realm of online social networks (OSN) has evolved rapidly over the last decade. While literature has primarily focused on Twitter, Facebook presents a unique forum for seeking secondhand knowledge on highly specialized topics including life-threatening medical conditions. Cognitive authority expressed through accounts of personal experiences augments authoritative resources that often are inaccessible or non-existent. OSN posts in Facebook groups appear as a plethora of documents thrown upon the virtual floor, disorganized and unsearchable. This paper offers ideas of what could be possible when interaction design (Ixd) is applied to Facebook groups to promote trustworthiness and discoverability for the information …

Science Serving Industry: Documentary Authority And Industrial Influence In 19th Century American Chemistry, Shawn Martin

Proceedings from the Document Academy

No abstract provided.

A Palimpsest Of Diné Voices, Frances Vitali, Brian C. O'Connor

Proceedings from the Document Academy

We use the idea of a palimpsest to probe and illuminate Hayse's model of communication as a dance - not simply the erasure of a single manuscript but the scraping away of the communication system of an entire people.

Among Navajo (Dine’), oral tradition and oral language still operates within mediated print and digital technologies as a complementarity. There is still a commitment to honoring whose voice is telling the stories in American Indian literature, for colonialist attitudes may still be coded with unchallenged stereotypes, cultural inaccuracies for readers.

Modeling the intersection of Diné culture and Anglo culture – both …

The Materiality Of Documents And The Genocidal Continuum, Martin I. Nord, D. Grant Campbell

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper uses Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s concept of the “genocidal continuum” to examine the materiality of documents in the context of Canada’s historical treatment of indigenous peoples. We discuss Canada’s Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, using a hermeneutic perspective inspired by Hans-Georg Gadamer, and argue that the Report’s status as a material document plays a complex role in Canada’s acknowledgement of its past treatment of indigenous cultures and its current efforts at reconciliation. Virtually all societies contain philosophical, religious, and social norms that implore us to be responsible, ethical, or loving to everyone, even the stranger. But in cases …

What Is A Nondocument?, Marc Kosciejew

Proceedings from the Document Academy

What is a nondocument? This vignette begins to explore this question by playfully presenting different inquiries from diverse angles with the aim of provoking reflections on this conceptual curiosity.

Documents, Futures: Palm Reading, Palmyra Leaves, And Planetary Prophesy, Bhuva Narayan

Proceedings from the Document Academy

I begin to feel as if I’d been wandering around with these false documents permanently tattooed to my hand, forcing me to walk through life in a story not really my own.

Nothing To Write Home About: Aphorisms Against Actuality, Daniel Kissinger, Maisha Manson

Proceedings from the Document Academy

We ask the reader to consider what the claiming of home and home-ness means. For you, for each of us, for our nation. We jump between different documents and documentations of what it means to be, to make, to keep, to establish, to live at home. We look, particularly, to the aphorisms that collect around the sense and feeling of home, and home-ness. We posit counter-documents from historical archives to these structures of feeling which function to make (some of) us feel “at home,” or at least a certain way, while pushing out those who are marked as unwanted, who …

Evidence, Ronald E. Day

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Subjects found,

Documents lost.

Telos Haunts Billboards, Colin Post

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This piece is an excerpt from an ongoing hypertext poem, akhilleus, which chronicles the activities of a network of characters interacting with the built world via text. This particular piece follows Telos, a seer of ends, as they appear before a billboard. Telos contemplates billboards as a kind of document, a succession of information planes along the roadway, echoing into and past each other, and also shares a premonition of the end of billboards.

The Gen Book And Transtextuality, Hilary Yerbury

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This piece suggests that although individuals can make decisions not to speak of difficult times in their lives, documents with the multiple relationships created through transtextuality can act as silent witnesses to these unspoken times.

Keepers: Marking The Value Of The Books On My Shelves, Vassiliki Veros

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Lydia Pyne in her Object Lessons book, Bookshelf, says, “Bookshelves are dynamic, iterative objects that cue us to the social values we place on books and how we think books ought to be read.”

This cued me to reflect upon the books that I keep on my personal bookshelves and my deep engagement with them. This is evidenced through the markings and non-markings that my keeper books compelled me to make/not make. I then use my own engagement with my books to make various responses to positive and negative critiques of romance fiction.

Editorial, Tim Gorichanaz

Proceedings from the Document Academy

In response to the changing landscape of academic publishing, this special issue called for poetic engagements with questions of scholarly interest. In putting together this issue, we sought to showcase without evisceration the complex roles that documents play in human life.