Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2013 06:54:56 -0400
From: Suzanne Stauffer <[log in to unmask]>
To: Open Lib/Info Sci Education Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: Users, Technology and Knowledge (fwd)

I'll jump in on this one :

> Why is "documentation" in your "technology section" ?

Given my background with information technolgy, I associate documentation
with instructions on how to use information technology. If you have a
better place for it, I'd be happy to hear about your suggestions.

> Bibliography was always associated with "documentation" roots btw
> much more than "technology"   jumped that bandwagon

I don't understand your comment here.  I associate "bibliography" with a
disciple or culture, and "documentation" with an information technology.
Please explain your ideas.

Yes, we do refer to the manuals and instructions as "documentation," but 
the term existed long before information technology was even a gleam in 
its father's eye. If I, as a professor, ask a student to provide 
"documentation," I am not asking for instructions on how to use 
information technology. I am asking for references to valid and reliable 
scholarly evidence of the claims being made. I am asking for the student 
to (virtually) produce the documents on which the claim is based.

It is, in fact, a synonym for "bibliography," which is the process of 
documenting books and collections of books. McKenzie defines bibliography 
as "the discipline that studies texts as recorded forms, and the processes 
of their transmission, including their production and reception." 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography Those studies document the forms 
and the processes.

Then there's Paul Otlet and his "Documentation science," which is the 
direct predecessor of "information science." 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation_science

Suzanne M. Stauffer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Library and Information Science
Louisiana State University
277 Coates Hall
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
(225)578-1461
Fax: (225)578-4581
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Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

--T.S. Eliot, "Choruses from The Rock"

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