The basic postulates of documentology – the general theory of documents

Abstract

The author introduces the basic principles of documentology. Its subject is the document as an abstract concept considered at the methodological, theoretical, historical and practical levels. Structurally, it is legitimate to study the document a s a w hole, a s w ell a s i n r elation t o i ts i ndividual a spects a nd f eatures. The result of this study is the division of documentology into general, special and specific discipline. The pan-civilization significance of documents as the most important masterpiece of human genius is that it enables to freeze things in time or even to turn time back – which is otherwise impossible for the human beings.The documents give the material form to ethereal thoughts and knowledge of any kind, over the entire existence of the humankind. The appearance of the written language enables to draw the line between prehistorical and historical periods of human existence. No one social function is possible without documents; the documents has been the most powerful factors of the civilization progressing. The entity of document is compared to that of information; the former is characterized mainly with its components, namely nominative, generative, material, signative, semantic, syntaxive, temporal and pragmatic. The best definition of document is given by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO): Document is “recorded information or material object which can be used as a unit in the documentation process”; in particular, the document in library collections is the recorded information or a physical matter matching the collection profile. The basic postulates of documentology are generalized; they comprise the discipline structure and laws, the general principles of creating, disseminating, storing and using the documents; as well as the core document elements.