Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Research Program For Studying Lams And Community In The Digital Age, Andreas Vårheim, Roswitha Skare, Noah Lenstra, Kiersten F. Latham, Geir Grenersen

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The paper outlines a research effort into the changing representations, policies, strategies, activities, and practices of libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) in the digital age. Comprehensive social changes including big slow-moving processes, such as aging populations, global migration, technological change, and environmental change, expose communities and LAM institutions to vulnerabilities. How do the institutions handle vulnerabilities, how do they become more resilient, and how do they contribute to building the resilience of their local communities?

The Public Library And Social Media: A Case Study From Tromsø, Norway, Roswitha Skare

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Historically, archives, libraries and museums (ALM) have been perceived as institutions providing infrastructure for an open and enlightened public discourse. The Norwegian Public Libraries Act focuses on public libraries being providers of knowledge and cultural expressions, agents of popular enlightenment, local meeting places and arenas of debate and participation in the public sphere. But public libraries are also supposed to keep up with the technological development and to offer digital services to the inhabitants of their municipality. This paper presents the first findings of an ongoing research project investigating the relationship between physical meetings at the Tromsø public library and …

The Wonders Of The Augsburg Cabinet: Three Ways Of Experiencing A Document, Kiersten F. Latham

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Since even before Frohmann (2009) proposed his document analysis on the meaning of cabinets of curiosity, I have been fascinated with them. Their emergence in the 15th century (MacGregor, 2007) is also the tantalizing beginnings of the birth of the modern museum. In museum studies, we often ask what the meaning of the museum is today (Latham & Simmons, 2014); I believe that part of the answer to this question is in these curious compartmentalized pieces of furniture that held the wonders of the world and helped users make meaning a very long time ago.

One can see examples of …

Disciplines Derived From The Discovery Of Historical Archives, Yongsheng Chen, Huanning Su

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper reviews four famous areas of study in China that emerged from the discovery of historical archives to become their own disciplines. Through a literature review, this paper analyzes the importance of historical archives for forming disciplines by introducing the origin, development, research objectives and research contents of these four disciplines. Based on that, this paper finally suggests that people’s attention to archives is the biggest reason for forming disciplines. By discussing the reasons for accelerating the combination of studies and historical archives, this paper gives suggestions for archives management.

The Architext Of Biblion: Digital Echoes Of Paul Otlet, Arthur Perret

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Paul Otlet's 1934 Traité de documentation is a landmark publication, but its considerable scope, complex structure and sheer volume make it a particularly challenging resource to use. This paper reports on an experiment in which visual methods and lexicometry are used to understand how the Traité is organized and what it is about. We describe the underlying logic of the experiment using the concepts of biblion and architext, then process the table of contents and full text of the book with several visualization methods, discussing their output. This allows us to confirm and expand on previous qualitative appraisal of the …

Documents And Moral Knowledge: Art In Yellowstone National Park, Tim Gorichanaz

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Documents have traditionally been conceptualized as representations of reality. Recently, scholars have been exploring how documents can also construct reality. In this paper, I follow this thread, discussing how documents can supply moral knowledge, showing what people ought to value in the world, thereby guiding action. Specifically, I discuss two works of art depicting Yellowstone National Park: a painting by Thomas Moran, done in the 19th century; and a photograph by Michael Nichols, from the 21st. Both of these works respond to a dualism in the human relationship to the wilderness, dating back at least to the European colonization of …

The Documentality Of Memory In The Post-Truth Era, Claire Scopsi

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This article analyzes the documentality of memories in order to ground further consideration of memory for historical research in the post-truth era. The article compares discussions of the document in document theory to those in French historical epistemology in order to establish what is a reliable documentary source. Formerly, reliability was rooted in the paradigm of truth and the authenticity guaranteed by institutions and scientists. In today's post-truth era, these foundations are questioned. This article suggests that we consider the production of historical narratives as a design process, and that we evaluate the truthfulness of a source according to three …

From Bibliography To Documentography, Michael K. Buckland

Proceedings from the Document Academy

There is ambiguity in the use of the term bibliography for both the study of printed books and also for the listing of accessible intellectual resources. We address this ambiguity by examining two well-known anomalies: Donald F. Mckenzie’s assertion that bibliography should extend to all media, including culturally significant objects in the landscape and Suzanne Briet’s declaration that an antelope in a zoo is a document. This paper summarizes and extends an earlier, more detailed discussion (Buckland, 2018).

A Documentary-Material Approach For Performance, Marc Kosciejew

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This article begins a conceptual discussion about the relationship between documentation, performance, and materiality. It argues that a documentary approach helps show the roles played by documents and practices with them in performance’s materialization and constitution. It presents the start of a documentary approach for analyzing performance by discussing some ways in which documentation helps provide a material basis for performance beyond its enactment whilst simultaneously materializing and constituting it in and for other diverse contexts.

Documenting Performance And Contemporary Data Models: Positioning Performance Within Frbr And Lrm, Deborah Lee

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Documents relating to the performing arts have proven a complex and somewhat unresolved part of the data models which fuel modern bibliographic cataloguing standards. The model of bibliographic data known as FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records), which is now superseded by LRM (IFLA Library Reference Model), underpin cataloguing standards, yet do not easily deal with materials relating to performance. The article introduces FRBR and LRM, and highlights existing literature which explores these models as related to performance documentation. An exposition of an important paper by Miller and Le Boeuf from 2005 is given, and their model forms the basis …