Documents as Recorded Evidence

draft Guidelines from 1993, not as selection criterion but rather as something that applies to MoW as a whole: “the library and archival heritage is a form of memory of the citizens of the world, an active memory of such importance that constant care is required to keep it always accessible in the form most convenient for the needs.”¹²⁷ From this perspective, the use of the notion of collective memory in the context of MoW is nothing but a reflection of the status of documentary heritage as heritage of humanity: “…books, periodicals and manuscripts constitute the collective 'Memory of the World'. Other than our individual memories, they span the generations and the centuries.”¹²⁸ This understanding of documentary heritage as active memory with a living significance does not differ from that of Halbwachs, given that collective memory defines and holds communities together in both cases. However, whereas Halbwachs presents this collective memory as a constant reconstruction of the present, MoW, for which the Register will be a significant document in itself,¹²⁹ considers it a legacy of the past that should be “retained undistorted and undiminished.”¹³⁰ Such an understanding reflects the influence of libraries and archives in MoW, and particularly their understanding of what documents are. Since the notion of documentary heritage is based on that of document, an analysis of this latter concept now follows.

document” something, closer consideration reveals that this is more complex than first appears. The difficulty is emphasised in the General Guidelines through the example of a painting, which can be perceived as both an art object and a document. The question is “when is a painting documentary heritage, and when it is not? Was the primary purpose of the painting to document, or is it primarily the subjective expression of the artist?”¹³⁴ Exactly when a painting becomes document is indicated as resting with the interpretation of the IAC.

However, the question of when an object becomes a document is an older question, dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century and closely intertwined with the theoretical developments of the concept of document in scientific research. In this regard, a closer analysis is provided later particularly because the question of what a document is has recently been raised again by the scientific community, in light of the many changes triggered by digital technology.¹³⁵ However, for the purpose of this subchapter, it is already useful to briefly note how this question arose.

Niels W. Lund provides a comprehensive analysis of how the understanding of a “document”

has historically developed within Europe, explaining that the initial Latin meaning of the word implied that documents were “lessons”; however, this understanding was lost under the influence of European state bureaucracy from the seventieth century onwards, when documents started being equated with written texts.¹³⁶ In the fields of library and archival sciences, such an understanding dominated until the beginning of the twentieth century, when Paul Otlet introduced a revolutionary change, extending the definition of documents beyond written texts to also include three dimensional objects, including archaeological and natural objects.¹³⁷ He did so believing that these objects could also be considered documents, provided one was informed by their observation.¹³⁸ However, one could argue from this perspective that all objects without exception provide some sort of information and are thus documents. Accordingly, the word object would no longer be needed, because the word document would characterise them all. In this respect, at what point objects turn into documents became a serious question for scientific inquiry. Briet, who constructed upon the work initiated by Otlet, attempted to answer this question by asking: “Is a star a document? Is

134 Edmondson, Memory of the World: General Guidelines, 9.

135 See subchapters 3.2, 3.2.1 and 3.2.2 in this dissertation.

136 Niels W. Lund, “Document Theory,” Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 43, no. 1 (2009):

1-55.

137 Paul Otlet, Traité de Documentation - Le Livre sur le Livre – Théorie et Pratique (Bruxelle: Editiones Mundaneum, 1934).

138 Michael Buckland, “What is a ‘Document’?,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 48, no. 9 (1997), 805.

a pebble rolled by a torrent a document? Is a living animal a document? No. But the photographs and the catalogues of stars, the stones in a museum of mineralogy, and the animals that are catalogued and shown in a zoo, are documents.”¹³⁹ Through her analysis, Briet defined some necessary conditions for objects to become documents. While she does not actually describe any rules, Buckland, who conducted a careful analysis of her text, inferred that objects become documents if: they have a material basis (materiality or physical dimension); are intended to give evidence (intentionality); are processed to give evidence (contextualization); and are perceived as documents (phenomenological dimension).¹⁴⁰ Therefore, in order to define documents, it became important to define the conditions that objects must meet to become documents, rather than simply explaining what documents do, i.e. provide information. In order to define documentary heritage, similar conditions are provided in MoW.¹⁴¹

First, documentary heritage must be movable, with the Guidelines further explaining that “this normally excludes items which are part of a fixed fabric such as a building or a natural site.”¹⁴² This reference seems to exclude items that could fall under the WHC. Second, documentary heritage must contain signs, codes, sound and images, and consequently largely excludes everything that is not textual, graphical or audio-visual. Accordingly, this reference seems to exclude cultural objects, as discussed above. Third, MoW acknowledges that documentary heritage has a material basis yet does not consider all kinds of materiality. In the context of MoW, materiality must be preservable, with the Guidelines explaining in brackets that “the carriers are non-living.”¹⁴³ This reference seems to have been made in order to exclude manifestations that could fall under the ICH. Fourth, documentary heritage must be reproducible and migratable, and thus excludes works of art and other “originals” that were not intended as reproducible. Fifth, documentary heritage must be the product of a deliberate documenting process. The idea of deliberate intention has been already remarked as ambiguous. In this regard, it is noteworthy that a recent MoW document – the so-called MoW Companion, released as draft in 2011 as a supplement to the Guidelines, in order to facilitate the process of submitting nominations – provides a slightly changed understanding, no longer

139 Suzanne Briet, What is Documentation? ed. and trans. Ronald E. Day et al. (Maryland, Toronto, Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 2006), 10.

140 Michael Buckland, “What is a ‘Document’?”

141 There are exceptions to the conditions that have been mentioned in this present dissertation but they are not of direct relevance to the argument discussed in this chapter. Exceptions are discussed in Edmondson, Memory of the World: General Guidelines.

142 Edmondson, Memory of the World: General Guidelines, 8.

143 Ibid.

listing this fifth condition. According to the MoW Companion, “a document is an item that is made up of signs or codes (such as writing) or sounds and/or images (such as a recording, photograph or film), and is (usually) moveable, preservable, and able to be reproduced or copied.”¹⁴⁴ As it can be seen in this definition, the fifth condition of deliberate intention has not been included. However, there is another important difference between the General Guidelines and the MoW Companion that warrants some attention. Whereas the conditions listed in the Guidelines define documentary heritage, those listed in the Companion define a document, as can be seen in the citation above, which shows that the notions of document and documentary heritage are used interchangeably. However, the difference between them is crucial, at least because the documentary heritage in MoW refers to documents that have been raised above their informational function to the level of the heritage of humanity.

Accordingly, documents cannot mean exactly the same as documentary heritage. Therefore, the five conditions presented above should be first and foremost considered conditions for defining documentary heritage rather than documents, because this is also supported by the explanations provided in the General Guidelines, whose purpose seems to not only relate to the definition of documentary heritage but also the contextualization of MoW among other UNESCO initiatives for culture and heritage.