Diplomatics as a methodological perspective for archival knowledge organization

Abstract

Knowledge organization is usually discussed in the Library and Information Science community, but it is a concept rarely applied to archival science. It occurs, among other things, due the fact that until the late twentieth century the discipline did not recognize information as its object of study, studying only the record and the archive. Archival science began to consider information asits object of study when in 1988, in North America, the authors Couture, Ducharme, and Rousseau, proposed the use of the terms “organic information” and “nonorganic information”, defining the former as one created and received by a physical person or entity in the course of a practical activity, and the latter as one contained in bibliographical records, replacing therefore the concepts of archival and bibliographic records, in archival science research.

Description: Its meaning, epistemology, and use with emphasis on information science

“…In archival science there have been important discussions on the theoretical and philosophical bases of the field. Often, postmodernism has been suggested as a preferred position, (Cook, 2001a(Cook, , 2013, Tognoli and Guimarães (2010), and criticism have characterized it as "fashionable nonsense" (see Cook, 2001b). For an introduction to postmodernism and the critics, see Aylesworth (2015).…”

Provenance as a Domain Analysis Approach in Archival Knowledge Organization

“…As a consequence of this recent information approach to archives, domain analysis concepts are rarely addressed in archival science. This occurs, among other reasons, due to the fact that until the late twentieth century the archival discipline did not recognize information as its object of study, studying only records and archives (Tognoli et al, 2013). With new forms of documentary production resulting from new information technologies, the organization of knowledge is replaced by a more central role in the work of the archivist, who is connected to other information professionals and to new concepts such as DA.…”

“…With new forms of documentary production resulting from new information technologies, the organization of knowledge is replaced by a more central role in the work of the archivist, who is connected to other information professionals and to new concepts such as DA. In this sense, archival knowledge can be regarded as all the knowledge that is contained in the records produced or accumulated by a particular person or entity and grouped together (Tognoli et al, 2013). This is what makes the respect of fonds an inherent attribute (Duchein, 1983).…”

“…Currently, this mediating process between socially produced knowledge and its posterior social use is deeply connected to knowledge organization, which transcends information science (IS), and today occupies one of the most significant areas of theoretical and methodological reflection, and more recently, has been addressed based on its cultural context. In this context, the knowledge organization approach regarding the processes inherent to archival science has been recently discussed as archival knowledge organization (Tognoli et al 2013).…”

Archival Knowledge: Conceptual Frameworks for Recent Terminology in the KO Domain

“…Recently, archival science, which has been linked for years to the historical, administrative and diplomatic fields, is getting closer to the disciplines that have recorded information and knowledge as their object of study, finding in the fields of information science and knowledge organization a space for interlocution, especially from what has been defined by Tognoli, Guimarães and Tennis (2013) as archival knowledge. Knowledge organization (KO) constitutes an effective interdisciplinary locus (García Marco 1995;Hjørland 2008) in which fields such as information science, logic, linguistics, communication, among others, are integrated in terms of theoretical and methodological frameworks that foster the development of processes, products and instruments regarding the representation and organization of documents and of their informational contents, both by persons and by programs.…”