1998 WhatIsADigitalDocument

(Buckland, 1998) ⇒ Michael Buckland. (1998). “What is a Digital Document.” In: Document Numérique (Paris) 2(2).

Notes

Quotes

Abstract

The question "What is a digital document?" is seen as a special case of the question "What is a document?" Ordinarily the word "document" denotes a textual record. Early this century, attempts to provide access to the rapidly growing quantity of available documents raised questions about which should be considered a "document". Paul Otlet and others developed a functional view of "document" and discussed whether, for example, sculpture, museum objects, and live animals, could be considered to be "documents". Suzanne Briet equated "document" with organized physical evidence. These ideas resemble notions of "material culture" in cultural anthropology and "object-as-sign" in semiotics. Others, especially in the USA (e.g. Jesse Shera and Louis Shores) took a narrower view. Old confusions between medium, message, and meaning are renewed with digital technology because technological definitions of "document" become even less realistic when everything is in bits.

1. Introduction

For practical purposes, people develop pragmatic definitions, such as "anything that can be given a file name and stored on electronic media" or "a collection of data plus properties of that data that a user chooses to refer to as a logical unit.” And, as so often in discussions of information, one finds definitions of "document" that focus on one aspect and are often highly metaphorical, such as "`captured' knowledge," "data in context," and "an organized view of information."

Digital systems have been concerned primarily with text and text-like records (e.g. names, numbers, and alphanumeric codes), but the present interest in icons and graphics reminds us that we may need to deal with any phenomena that someone may wish to observe: events, processes, images, and objects as well as texts [BUC 91].

6. Digital documents

Attempts to define digital documents are likely to remain elusive, if more than an ad hoc, pragmatic definition is wanted. Definitions based on form, format and medium appear to be less satisfactory that a functional approach, following the path of reasoning underlying the largely forgotten discussions of Otlet's objects and Briet's antelope.

References

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	Author	volume	Date Value	title	type	journal	titleUrl	doi	note	year
1998 WhatIsADigitalDocument	Michael Buckland			What is a Digital Document		Document Numérique	http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/digdoc.html			1998