“To treat of the world”: Paul Otlet's ontology and epistemology and the circle of knowledge

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to document how Paul Otlet, founding-father of what is termed at present as “information science”, attempted to provide a complete “image of the world” (and reality in general) by establishing the scientific discipline he dubbed “documentation”. The paper also aims to focus on how Otlet represented human knowledge and reality in a systematic and unified way. Design/methodology/approach – A close reading of Otlet’s primary works and some of his personal archives was undertaken. Findings – Most importantly, it is shown that Otlet’s views on documentation were immersed in a cosmological, objectivist, humanitarian and ontological framework that is alien to contemporary information science. Correspondingly, his alleged affinity with positivism is reassessed. Originality/value – The philosophical foundations of the origins of information science are highlighted. Indirectly, this paper is relevant to the ongoing debate on realism and anti-realism in information science. Keywords Information science, History, Knowledge sharing, Document management, Encyclopaedias, Entrepreneurialism Paper type Research pape

Analyse documentaire en milieu universitaire : deux approches générales comparées

Ce mémoire porte sur l’analyse documentaire en milieu universitaire. Deux approches générales sont d’abord étudiées : l’approche centrée sur le document (premier chapitre), prédominante dans la tradition bibliothéconomique, et l’approche centrée sur l’usager (deuxième chapitre), influencée par le développement d’outils le plus souvent associés au Web 2.0. L’opposition entre ces deux démarches reflète une dichotomie qui se trouve au cœur de la notion de sujet, c’est-à-dire les dimensions objective et subjective du sujet. Ce mémoire prend par conséquent la forme d’une dissertation dont l’avantage principal est de considérer à la fois d’importants acquis qui appartiennent à la tradition bibliothéconomique, à la fois des développements plus récents ayant un impact important sur l’évolution de l’analyse documentaire en milieu universitaire. Notre hypothèse est que ces deux tendances générales doivent être mises en relief afin d’approfondir la problématique de l’appariement, laquelle définit la difficulté d’accorder le vocabulaire qu’utilise l’usager dans ses recherches documentaires avec celui issu de l’analyse documentaire (métadonnées sujet). Dans le troisième chapitre, nous examinons certaines particularités liées à l’utilisation de la documentation en milieu universitaire dans le but de repérer certaines possibilités et certaines exigences de l’analyse documentaire dans un tel milieu. À partir d’éléments basés sur l’analyse des domaines d’études et sur la démarche analytico-synthétique, il s’agit d’accentuer l’interaction potentielle entre usagers et analystes documentaires sur le plan du vocabulaire utilisé de part et d’autre.The topic of this dissertation is subject analysis in a university environment. Two major approaches are studied at first: subject analysis centered on the document (first chapter), historically predominant in librarianship, and subject analysis centered on the user (second chapter), mostly influenced by the development of Web 2.0 technologies. The opposition between those two approaches reflects a dichotomy which is at the very heart of the notion of subject, meaning the objective and subjective aspects of the subject. The outline of the dissertation has the distinct advantage of presenting well established practices in the field of librarianship as well as recent developments that do have an impact on subject analysis in a university environment. Our hypothesis is that both major tendencies must be highlighted to study the question of mapping the terminology (subject metadata) that comes from subject analysis with the terminology that users tend to favor while searching for documents. In the third chapter, we examine more closely particularities of the university environment in an effort to look at distinct possibilities and requirements for subject analysis in such an environment. Reinforced by elements taken from domain and facet analysis, the goal is to accentuate the potential interaction between users and indexers on a terminological level