What are documents? IMS1603 Lecture 5

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Sara Morrison
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1 IMS1603 Lecture 5 What are documents? Outline of today s lecture 1. The purpose of documents 2. The nature of documents 3. Documents in context 2 We are surrounded by documents There is barely a moment in our waking lives when we are not engaged in either creating new documents or accessing existing ones. 3

2 1. What are documents used for? to communicate professionally and personally to conduct business to establish our rights and obligations to entertain ourselves 4 1a. Document intent to inform (ie to convey knowledge) to communicate to entertain to authorise 5 1a. Document intent to control or regulate relationships between people to provide evidence to certify an action or deed 6

3 1c. Some documents are found: tree rings fossils forensic evidence 7 1d. Intentional documents Information products are intended for publication: > books > music CDs > signs > published photographs > commercial films > political leaflets > websites 8 1e. Intentional documents Information by-products are created as records or evidence: > private letters & diaries > receipts & statements > official records 9

4 1e. Intentional documents Information by-products serve different purposes for different users. You may throw your receipt away, but can a shop afford to be so cavalier with its records of sale? What different information by-products might be generated by the sale of the following item? A document is a representation of knowledge and/or recorded evidence of an action and/or a captured communication 11 2a. A document has attributes as Stored information Retrievable information Accessible information 12

5 2b. Document as stored information a physical object that can inform us (information-as-thing) it stores/holds information and we can in turn store it in an information system 13 2c. Document as retrievable information stored in an information system, documents need to be available for retrieval how we classify a document can play a crucial role in allowing us to retrieve it when we need it 14 2d. Document as accessible information once retrieved, documents must be accessible ie, in a format that can be readily used 15

6 2f. A traditional definition of a document a record on a more or less flat surface S. R. Ranganathan (a key figure in 20th century information management) 16 2g. A Document can take the form of Text writing, numbers, musical notation Moving and still images film and video, paintings and photographs, diagrams etc. Recorded sound speech, music etc. 17 2h. Documents can assume various media Documents can be represented, captured, stored, retrieved and accessed: >as marks, signs, sound waves, images or bits >on paper, card, vinyl, film, magnetic tape or CD 18

7 2i. Elements are documentary forms The medium (on or in which it carries its information content and structure) The technolog(ies) used to create and/or access it Structure - elements and organisational features characteristic of the form 19 2i. Elements are documentary forms Purpose for which it was created Content - information unique to a particular document Context - why? by whom? under what circumstances? when? etc Contextual information Information about a document: who created it? why was it created? under what circumstances? in what system? for which audience? 21

8 3. Contextual information is external to the document, but central to its value as information or evidence Document habitats The workplace The home The Internet Document habitats The Library The Archives The Gallery The Museum The Zoo 24

9 Can an antelope be a document? Is a star a document? Is a pebble rolled by a torrent a document? Is a living animal a document? No. But some documents are: the photographs and the catalogues of stars, stones in a museum of mineralogy, and animals that are cataloged and shown in a zoo. Suzanne Briet (1951) (another key figure in 20th century information management) 25 Next lecture: Searching for information/ Document analysis Further reading S. Briet (1951) What is Documentation? Paris: Éditions Documentaires Industrielles et Techniques (EDIT), accessed 5 August M. Buckland (1991) Information and Information Systems. New York: Greenwood. R. Day (2001) The Modern Invention of Information. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. J. Kennedy & C. Schauder (1997) Records management: a guide to corporate recordkeeping. Second Edition. Melbourne: Addison Wesley Longman. M. Mackenzie (2000) The Personal Organization of Electronic Mail Messages in a Business Environment: An Exploratory Study, Library & Information Science Research 22 (4). M. Mackenzie (2002) Storage and retrieval of in a business environment: An exploratory study, Library & Information Science Research 24 (3). M. Middleton (2002) Information Management. Wagga Wagga: Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University. 27

RDA RESOURCE DESCRIPTION AND ACCESS

RDA RESOURCE DESCRIPTION AND ACCESS Definition: RDA A new set of descriptive cataloguing rules developed by the Joint Steering Committee to replace the current set of rules referred to as Anglo- American