The 'document' in InformationSciencespace-time: critical and pragmatic reflections of a concept

The growing discussion about a possible neodocumentation and the less dissemination of the classical type of documentation makes it necessary to deal with the relationship between the two approaches to an understanding of the notion of document in Information Science. We aim to discuss the literature on 'document, starting from the French-speaking gaze (Belgium and France, precisely), in the sense of a material and symbolic object, product of documentary practice. It seeks to establish relations between this conceptualization and that of the literature of Anglo- American orientation denominated generically 'neodocumentation'. The course of reflection, a theoretical-conceptual approach, under an epistemological-historical and pragmatic approach, discusses a) the notion of document proposed by Paul Otlet at the beginning of the 20th century, then developed by the French, b) Anglophone production which, in particular, from the 1990s, builds on Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet's ideas to develop their arguments, and c) the view of other cultures of appropriation of the concept, such as Spanish, Italian and Brazilian cultures. As we have pointed out, the historical construction of the notion of document indicates that it is the product of mediation actions, which are carried out through activities such as selection, representation, ordination, expositions, while, from another point of view, the approach of the neodocumentalists privileges the document regarding the relations of power that they involve as object produced by the man, therefore, relationships located historically, socially and politically.