My Perception of a Document

Hello everyone who belongs to the Bloggers Anonymous Group:)

I found the Michael Buckland reading What is a Document to be quite interesting, especially so after the discussion with our group and Huan.

Huan's idea that he is a document seemed to be a little difficult for some, until he explained how this could be, but I do agree with him and I feel as though the word Document can be very much like the word text.  As an English teacher, I connect the two words instantly, knowing that I teach that a document is a text.

Even more interestingly, though is the fact that from my experience anything can be a text, so that also fits in with Huan's theory that a document can be almost anything too.

So, with that in mind, both a text and a document have much the same natures, problems, life cycles and uses.

I'm going to have a small go at answering the questions in our first tute about Buckland's reading, relating to both documents and texts.

Question One.
How does the rapidly increasing range of media affect the notion of the document (text)?
 So, if we look at the Presentation, Structure, Context and Content of a document or text, all of these have been impacted upon by technology.  The Presentation of a doc/text is the format it is in and the type, colour and size of fonts.  This Presentation is going to be different if it's an online document, even as a markup hard copy.  The Structure of a document or text is strongly related to the context which you place it in and then the content is specific to both the structure and the context.  A newspaper text or document will have it's expected Structure, within the context of a newspaper and the content will address the Purpose of the document or text.  It is now commonplace for users to access online newspapers and other documents and texts which are interactive, even although they do present as being visually the same as a physical document or text. All of these aspects of documents and texts convey meaning to situations and interactions.

Is the notion of a document even useful anymore?
Documents and texts are a part of our everyday lives, whether they are on our iPhones, our computers, a bill in our letterbox, or a sign by the side of the road.  They will always be useful and used.

Question Two.
Is it valid to call a movie, a painting, a sound recording of an interview or a piece of music a document?  Why/why not?
 I have taught film, paintings, sound recordings and music as texts, so they are documents too.  Just the way that I see it.  Every document and text has it's own Purpose, Presentation, Structure Context and Content, there are many different ones.

Question Three.
Are there 'information containers' that are not documents?
If Huan is a document then he is clearly an information container. We just need to ask lots of questions to glean the information from him.  I can't think of any information containers which are not documents.  Can you?

Question Four.
What is the difference between 'communication' and 'information'?
I do believe that we use communication to share or 'communicate' information?  So I suppose that makes them both different to each other.  However, the actual format used to communicate such information has to be a document or text?

Question Five.
How do new document technologies affect the use of documents?
Now we have text messages, emails, eBooks, and before we often used letters, pBooks, faxes and telephone calls more often.  These new technologies change how we use documents, simply because of their different capabilities and their ease and speed of use.

We are surrounded by documents and texts!!

So, I suppose that we need to work with them, try to understand their meaning and purpose and just enjoy :)
Happy blogging everyone,
Susanne