The informative potential of bibliographic classification systems – reflections on a discussion in the French Documentation Movement

Abstract

PurposeIn this article, the author discusses works from the French Documentation Movement in the 1940s and 1950s with regard to how it formulates bibliographic classification systems as documents. Significant writings by Suzanne Briet, Éric de Grolier and Robert Pagès are analyzed in the light of current document-theoretical concepts and discussions.Design/methodology/approachConceptual analysis.FindingsThe French Documentation Movement provided a rich intellectual environment in the late 1940s and early 1950s, resulting in original works on documents and the ways these may be represented bibliographically. These works display a variety of approaches from object-oriented description to notational concept-synthesis, and definitions of classification systems as isomorph documents at the center of politically informed critique of modern society.Originality/valueThe article brings together historical and conceptual elements in the analysis which have not previously been combined in Library and Information Science literature. In the analysis, the article discusses significant contributions to classification and document theory that hitherto have eluded attention from the wider international Library and Information Science research community. Through this, the article contributes to the currently ongoing conceptual discussion on documents and documentality.

Robert Pagès’ concept of the “auto-document” as a forerunner to neo-documentation’s philosophy of documentality

“…Let us return to Pag es' article to further understand this new philosophy of documentation that he was trying to propose, a new philosophy of documentation that no longer took "the book" as the literal and figurative symbol of documents as Otlet's theory of documentation did, but instead located documentation studies in form-function relationships between documentary systems ("writing") and experience. (Which would later characterize the neodocumentalist concept of documentality (Hansson, 2024)). I will here quote Buckland's translation, with some further elucidatory notes in brackets:…”

“…Let us return to Pagès’ article to further understand this new philosophy of documentation that he was trying to propose, a new philosophy of documentation that no longer took “the book” as the literal and figurative symbol of documents as Otlet’s theory of documentation did, but instead located documentation studies in form–function relationships between documentary systems (“writing”) and experience. (Which would later characterize the neo-documentalist concept of documentality (Hansson, 2024)). I will here quote Buckland’s translation, with some further elucidatory notes in brackets:But the techno-scientific character of modern culture has broken loose only through experimental practice, itself a break with the bookish document [“ document-livresque” ; recalling Otlet’s notion of the “book-document,” that is, documentation understood bibliographically].…”