Documentality as a Lens for Analyzing Scholarly Practices in the age of AI: Perspectives from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Information Science

Why Documents?

Michael Buckland in a seminal paper on document theory[1] argued that the popular term “information society” should be replaced with the more appropriate term “document society”. A summary of his key arguments is outlined here as a background to the event’s scope.   Viewed from the vantage point of its essence, its content, a document can be defined as an artifact that humans rely on to gain new insights or vicariously experience emotions. There are, however, other critical dimensions associated with documents, not having to do with their semantic essence.  In an organization, who creates the critical documents, who gets to edit them, who interprets and analyzes them, and who disseminates documents determine authority, remit of roles, and compensations.   Thus, the association of humans with documents in organizations influence the evolution of documents and the changing trajectory of documents in organizations impacts the humans that handle them. Sometimes we turn a thing into a document [1].

Consider the introduction of a knife as evidence in a trial, a cup displayed in a museum which was discovered in an archeological dig, or a rose preserved as a “pressed flower” added to a well-known author’s archival materials.  In all the latter instances, the actual origin of the objects has no bearing on turning the objects into documentary usage.   Viewed through the latter expanded and more nuanced dimensions, a document, therefore, takes on the role of a highly complex and powerful social artifact, whose stature, structure, evolution, and influence demand closer scrutiny. show more

Digitization of Documents

In the current milieu of scholarship, the notion of documents and its various roles have become even more complex due to the way digital platforms have now become pervasive, and how digital platforms are routinely deployed to produce and use most documents.  Given the ease of storing and editing and the demands of publishers, virtually all books written today are born digital.  Additionally, the digital platforms and the technology for creating different types of documents, beyond the conventional types, have now become easier, to a point that numerous humanities and social science scholars are seriously engaging with them to create dynamic documents[2] and they are also critically reflecting on non-conventional document formats to identify their limitations and possibilities[3].

The organizing committee feels while many forums have been held in the past to reflect on the impact of digitization on scholarly practices, few, if any, of the past initiatives engaged humanities and social science scholars that are deeply engaged in their individual disciplines and are also thoughtfully engaging and grappling with digital platforms to explore their impact on scholarly practices. We are also not aware of any effort which attempted to bring seasoned scholars from the social sciences, humanities, and information science together to examine and analyze the impact of digital platforms exclusively on documents and the impact of evolution of new formats of documents on the scholarly practices in human-centric disciplines. show more

Outcome

Many additional colleagues have shown strong interest in joining the conference as potential participants or speakers. We will target an audience of about 45-50 members. The University of Toronto has provided a small grant to support the conference. The venue of the conference will be the University de Barcelona. An agreement has been reached with the host institution to hold the meeting on October 20th 2025. show more

Audience and Participation

For the planned conference we will be seeking short position papers, 2-3 pages long, that we will then discuss in the meeting and some of the key contributors will be invited to develop their core ideas further into book chapters. The chapters will be aggregated into an edited volume (we are currently discussing partnership with and academic publishers). The published edited monographic volume will be a key outcome of the meeting. show more

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Foot notes

[1] Buckland, M. (2013). Document Theory: An Introduction, pp 223-237 in: Records, Archives and Memory: Selected Papers from the Conference and School on Records, Archives and Memory Studies, University of Zadar, Croatia. Ed. by Mirna Willer, Anne J. Gilliland and Marijana Tomić. Zadar: University of Zadar. (Michael is a co-organizer of this event.)

[2] For example, hypertextual content, avatars, games, and bots. As one specific example developed by one of the co-organizers, see Martin Puchner’s page on bots here: https://www.martinpuchner.com/custom-gpts-and-online-education.html.

[3] Tenen, D. (2024). Literary Theory for Robots. Norton. (Dennis is a co-organizer of this event.)

[4] Day, R. (2014). Indexing it All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data. MIT. (Ron is a co-organizer of this event.) show more

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