Suzanne Briet: What is Documentation? (1951/2006) [French, English]

Born in Paris in 1894, Suzanne Briet was active in the development of what was then known as Documentation but would now be called Information Management or Information Science. In 1931, she participated in founding the Union Française des Organismes de Documentation (UFOD). She was a leader in developing professional education for this new specialty and designed a plan for what would have been the first school of Documentation / Information Science worldwide, had it been established. In 1951, when a school of information science was finally established, Briet was the founding Director of Studies. She became Vice President of the International Federation for Documentation (FID) and acquired the nickname “Madame Documentation.”

What is Documentation? relates this fascinating story and includes the first English translation of Briet’s remarkable manifesto on the nature of documentation, Qu’est-ce que la documentation?. Part I sought to push the boundaries of the field beyond texts to include any material form of evidence (“Is a living animal a document?” she asked). Part II argued that a new and distinct profession was emerging. Part III urged the societal need for new and active documentary services.

This tract remains significant due to its continuing relevance towards understanding the nature, scope, and societal impacts of documents and documentation. Briet’s modernist perspective, combined with semiotics, deserves attention now because it offers a sturdy and insightful alternative to the scientific, positivist view that has so dominated information science and which is increasingly questioned.

Publisher EDIT, Paris, 1951
48 pages
via Laurent Martinet

English edition
Translated and edited by Ronald E. Day and Laurent Martinet with Hermina G. B. Anghelescu
Publisher Scarecrow Press, 2006
84 pages
via Ronald E. Day

Reviews: W. Bede Mitchell (College & Research Libraries, 2007), Jonathan Furner (Libraries & the Cultural Record, 2008).

Publisher (EN)

Qu’est-ce que la documentation? (French, 1951, updated on 2017-11-16)
What is Documentation? (English, 2006, PDFs), single PDF (OCR’d, added 2014-8-14 via Marcell Mars)

Cornelia Vismann: Files: Law and Media Technology (2000/2008)

“Quod non est in actis, non est in mundo. (What is not on file is not in the world.) Once files are reduced to the status of stylized icons on computer screens, the reign of paper files appears to be over. With the epoch of files coming to an end, we are free to examine its fundamental influence on Western institutions. From a media-theoretical point of view, subject, state, and law reveal themselves to be effects of specific record-keeping and filing practices. Files are not simply administrative tools; they mediate and process legal systems. The genealogy of the law described in Vismann’s Files ranges from the work of the Roman magistrates to the concern over one’s own file, as expressed in the context of the files kept by the East German State Security. The book concludes with a look at the computer architecture in which all the stacks, files, and registers that had already created order in medieval and early modern administrations make their reappearance.”

Originally published in German as Akten. Medientechnik und Recht, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2000

Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young
Publisher Stanford University Press, 2008
Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics series
ISBN 080475151X, 9780804751513
187 pages

Review (Liam Cole Young, Theory, Culture & Society)

Publisher

PDF (7 MB, updated on 2016-12-23)

W. Boyd Rayward: The Universe of Information: the Work of Paul Otlet for Documentation and international Organization (1975)

A biographical study of the life and work of Paul Otlet (1868-1944) focusing on his work for documentation and the creation of a range of international organizations.

Published for the International Federation for Documentation by the All-Union Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (Viniti), Moscow, 1975
FID Publication 520
390 pages

Author’s page on Otlet

PDF, PDF, PDF (28 MB)
TXT, TXT