The Art and Science of Documentation Management

By Lakhmi Jain and Graziella Tonfoni

As information becomes increasingly accessible through newly-introduced technologies, the human mind seeks a more comprehensive interpretation of the world in which we live. In order to manage this information overload, we must carefully reconsider our attitude towards documentation. While acknowledging the value of the standard guidebooks' hard rules on documentation management, Tonfoni advocates a new approach that promotes additional skills required for consistent decision-making, such as information sensitivity. This book has been conceived as a movie on paper, and as such, can be considered a 'documentary on documentation'. Readers are invited to analyse their own reading experience throughout a set of pages, to become 'interactive on paper'; some space is intentionally provided for practice and annotation. Exercises are included to help readers consolidate new skills, through an innovative 'learning by seeing' experience. Since history is based on documentation, every e-mail or memo we write becomes a part of our individual history. This book will be invaluable to those whose careers rest on accuracy, who need to create both succinct and clear reports and presentations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Jan 1, 2003
• ISBN: 9781841508757

Lakhmi Jain

Lakhmi Jain is a Director/Founder of the Knowledge-Based Intelligent Engineering System Centre in the University of South Australia.

Book preview

Chapter One

Documentation Management: an Art and a Science

This chapter is meant to illustrate how documentation management may be viewed and perceived both as an art and a science. Conceptual tools for rethinking of documentation are provided, which are derived out of a reformulation and adaptation of literary criticism and rhetoric. In order to be effectively used are categories here illustrated first placed within a larger framework for rethinking of the very act of producing documentation. The natural output of this new model of thinking about documentation management is meant to lead readers harmoniously into the realm of document engineering.

When we think of documentation management we have to immediately consider the complexity of this area, as even the two terms assembled documentation on the one hand and management on the other hand, entail a whole set of different aspects and their respective definition is a very complex one. As we may find in the Encyclopedia Britannica, art is the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments or experiences that can be shared with others. The term may also designate one of a number of modes of expression conventionally categorized by the medium utilized or the form of the product… The term may further be employed in order to distinguish a particular object, environment, or experience as an instance of aesthetic expression, allowing us to say, for example, that drawing or tapestry is art…

On the other hand, science is an activity or discipline concerned with theory rather than method, or requiring the systematic application of principles rather than relying on traditional rules, intuition and acquired skill.

And documentation is defined as the process or specialty of accumulating and classifying documents and making them available to others. Whereas management is the application of skill and care in the manipulation, use, treatment or control of things or persons, or in the conduct of an enterprise, operation and so on.Within the broader domain of documentation management, concepts, which are currently seen as opposite up to conflicting ones, may be harmoniously and effectively merged as the approach presented in this book is meant to demonstrate practically.

Just like we may see happen in research in artificial intelligence, when the problem of language was considered to be of relevance to the field, then a category was found by the research community, meant to label work done in the area. The specific category, which was initially identified and assigned, was the one of natural language processing, which was meant to cover language phenomena to be handled and processed. Immediately after such choice was made, it became evident to the research community that at least two sub fields should be identified and some further specification of natural language processing should be added.

Two new terms have therefore been identified: which are respectively the one of natural language generation on the one hand and the one of natural language understanding on the other. These new and very specific terms were meant to identify and define two very distinct aspects of language performance, which are production and reception.

Along the same lines as for documentation management, we may productively draw a distinction between document production and document-making sense" for practical decision making. The final aim as for carefully working out a comprehensive and most appropriate definition as for what documentation management should in fact be all about, is to promote accurate and effective decision making based upon reliable information derived from consistent interpretation.

Both aspects of documentation management, even if they are defined as distinctive ones, are nevertheless very much interconnected, as it is only as a consequence of really accurate documentation production, that we may conceive and envision a whole process of consistent meaning attribution and correct interpretation.

It took a really long time for the linguistic community to acknowledge those very tangible differences existing as for the process of language generation and the process of language understanding, whereas as for documentation management, it became soon quite obvious that both processes of production and reception respectively are not only very distinct, but that they cannot at all be taken for granted. Documentation management requires in fact a real competence, based upon a widevariety of skills, coming as a consequence of a most articulated and highly complex acquisition process.

We may definitely observe how much were academic models of documentation management and practitioners’ models, very distinct and very different for quite an extended period of time. Over the last two decades of our history, has the pervasive expansion of the Web and of the Internet in some ways determined the need for coming up with a real dialogue and discourse, finally connecting academic groups involved into research with the practitioners’ expanding population involved with day by day problems to be resolved.

Practitioners in the field of documentation management, such as information analysts, may certainly maintain that kind of authority, which comes from expertise and direct involvement in the field. Practitioners are therefore able to appreciate the validity of a certain model of exemplary work in documentation once they are exposed to it, and they are certainly very likely to perceive and then evaluate the degree of accuracy in coverage of that very same model and framework made available to them.

Information analysts are also able to identify errors and recognize what is really new and original as for each derivative part of each theory of documentation management they are exposed to. Information analysis may in some ways resemble literary criticism, which may be defined as the art and skill of appreciating and estimating the properties and qualities of a certain literary work, which has been reached throughout the practical use of many stylistic and rhetorical devices. By acting as some kind of literary critics may documentation analysts today talk back to the originating documentation producers in most constructive ways, asking them to be more specific, challenging them in many ways, up to even being able to ask them to complete and revise their work, if that was to be found not adequate.

The new role assigned to documentation analysts may in some ways resemble literary reviewing to some extent. As documentation reviewers themselves, will they be able to continue their conversation with the readers, who are decision makers. By acting as really specialized reviewers themselves, may documentation analysts today talk to decision makers effectively, also suggesting that different attitudes should be adopted as for the different kinds of documents. Some documents may in fact be considered as primary sources whereas others are to be viewed as derivative literature.

As information experts and specialists themselves, documentation practitioners will be able to annotate each document, attaching a short description as for the nature of it, they may add abstracts both informative and indicative, they may then also proceed toward creating a digest and abridgment themselves. A digest produced for facilitating decision makers needs to be considered as a consistently arranged compendium of selected and previously verified documents.

The practitioner’s voice may be revealed by the practitioner’s trace as for each document provided. The practitioner’s interpretive added value to each document may come in the form of an attachment, complemented by a comment signed, which will definitely create a point of reference for further questions to be asked.

The practitioner’s voice is today most appreciated as for document passing and handling. Anonymous or serial passing of pieces of information has proved to create enormous problems and also cause predictable damage, as when there is a need to ask for further clarification, nobody is really available to provide an answer, as there is actually no way to find out, to whom should that question be addressed in the first place.

Information tailoring is a quite recent and widely explored area of research, meant to ensure that users are modeled consistently, so that they may be provided that kind of knowledge they really seek. Decision making is about the quantitative aspect and the qualitative aspect of information and knowledge to be provided. But information tailoring should become an even more comprehensive research field and be extended to the tailors’ role definition too. In other words, it significantly matters, who has been in fact the tailoring team, and obviously declaring the identity of the teams involved is of crucial relevance. Information packaged always reflects the angles chosen by the documentation producers and this very aspect should be fully acknowledged and accounted for.

Information tailoring practices, if the information tailors’ perspective and point of view are missing, may easily turn into some kind of blind tailoring or black box tailoring altogether, where criteria prioritized as well as decisions made as for priorities, quantity and quality of information, sources and resources accessed, may remain unknown.

Documentation management related activities reside upon verification of collections of information made available. Information services and library studies be-come an integrating and most relevant part of information science. Collecting documents, filing them accurately and classifying them consistently is at the core of information analysts’ curricula. By learning how to handle large collections of documents, do information specialists acquire the capacity of shaping new information artifacts, which are derived from already existing sources. Entire sections of already existing documents may have to be converted into a new document, according to some specific format required. Aggregation of newly composed documents may also be suggested so that information analysts will have to be able to segment and parse a derivative document into many and most meaningful chunks, by adding the crucial metadata on top.

Metadata will include the source of extraction and the level of processing that a very specific chunk of derivative documentation has undergone, along with the information analyst’s identity. In order to facilitate documentation management of various kinds up to non homogeneous kinds, repositories are made up, based upon highly specific filing choices and precise categories assignment.

In order to facilitate targeted publications, such as reports or newsletters, each content package and component is to be extracted out of a wider repository according to the filing choices as well as labeling decisions made. Research on text mining is of crucial relevance, as to ensure accuracy and consistency in the selection of most meaningful chunks of information.

In her recent article that appeared in the ASIST Bulletin vol. 27 n.1, 2002, E.D. Liddy accurately and comprehensively defines text mining as the process of analyzing naturally occurring text for the purpose of discovering and capturing semantic information for insertion and storage in what we will call a Knowledge Organization Structure (KOS), with the ultimate goal of enabling knowledge discovery via either textual or visual access for use in a wide range of significant applications. Liddy adds that text mining is appropriately considered a subspecialty of the broader domain of Knowledge Discovery from Data (KDD), which in turn can be defined as the computational process of extracting useful information from massive amounts of digital data by mapping low-level data into richer, more abstract forms and by detecting meaningful patterns implicitly present in the data.

As for documentation management areas such as knowledge discovery, capturing and creation, as well as knowledge classification and representation beside and be-yond information retrieval and knowledge dissemination, become of crucial relevance.

Another area of research, which we may certainly add to this list, is data warehousing meant to indicate a whole variety of processes, which are relevant for collecting data from a whole number of different and diverse resources. Data warehousing is definitely meant to provide decision makers with a complex and highly integrated overview as for a certain topic they may need to explore both in depth and in breadth.

Documentation management is definitely meant to provide information analysts with those tools, which are specifically required, to cope with errors and misreading which may occur. There is no doubt that documentation management is prone to errors in many ways and of different kinds.

A difference should be drawn between errors in packaging and in interpretation, which is accidental or beyond the control of the individual or team involved versus intentional misconduct, which may be demonstrated to have been designed and planned, as coming out of an act of will.

Continuing and sustained verification for information packaging and interpretation accuracy is meant to reduce the risk of sustained vilification, which would derive from both accidental mistakes and intentional misreading.

Envisioning documentation management by and large triggers the need for actually considering the whole and complete information cycle and for thinking comprehensively about the whole process of information acquisition, packaging and utilization. Information may in fact be packaged and delivered but not necessarily be disseminated, or it may be disseminated, but not practically used, as it has been widely analyzed in Tonfoni (1998a), according to the nature of information provided and displayed. Careful attention should in fact be given as for the potential impact of a certain package of information once disclosed both at a reduced scale and at a larger scale. Amplification and distortion phenomena should be considered and analyzed before any critical information package is so widely circulated to become worldwide available news.

Chains of reactions caused by uncontrolled and unmonitored flows of critical knowledge, as well as consequences and side effects deriving out of their amplification throughout the media are also illustrated in the following chapters of this book.

Persistence of undesirable interpretive side effects as well as resonance of some interpretive generalization and dissemination of models, which are replicated throughout a whole variety of contexts, demands careful attention as for the pervasive use of some very special terminology.

Some information packages are particularly likely to trigger both interpretive and behavioral patterns meant to stay over time and expand significantly. Careful scrutiny is therefore to be planned as to verify that undesirable patterns are not encouraged so as enhanced by leakages and informational by-products, determining some interpretive loops, which may also be caused by some kind of interpretive exhaust and waste. New disciplines meant to regulate flows of information become a real ‘must be learnt’ for information analysts and for anyone involved in specialized documentation management, they are precisely Information Security and Strategic Ecdotics.

Information security is the science of securing information, which also needs to be conceived as the science for making sure that information is accurate, and therefore secure enough for decision makers to feel comfortable about making their own choices based upon it.

Information security resides upon the capacity of ensuring information accuracy. As a highly specialized discipline in itself, it is meant to provide those tools, which may assist information analysts in verification of the nature of information, they are analyzing and in charge of interpreting.

Information security also about securing decision makers, that information they are provided with, is really secure as for its reliability, perspicuity, salience and relevance. Strategic ecdotics may provide substantial help to information analysts, as it is planned to support them with a highly consistent set of categories, meant to make qualitative reasoning upon the nature of information possible in the first place. Strategic ecdotics allows for the reasoned analysis, the context sensitive interpretation and therefore the consistent classification and evaluation of documents, coming both in verbal and in written formats, throughout the application of context sensitive categories and scientifically based principles.Strategic ecdotics may profitably incorporate a methodology for document deconstruction, which is about x-raying, in-depth analysis and evaluation of a document, as to challenge its clarity and consistency by disclosing hidden meanings, implications, contradictions, and alternative interpretations.

Conceptual tools provided in the field of information security and strategic ecdotics are meant to make possible misunderstandings and derivative mistakes surface. When a field becomes well established as a consequence of a fully recognized set of theories then operational models also become available and a new definition may be required.

We may certainly think of the field of Document Engineering as the most advanced area as for research in documentation management meant to incorporate comprehensively both practical and conceptual tools, meant to optimize the documentation flow and final output result.

Quoting literally out of the second symposium on document engineering (DocEng ‘02) presentation, mission and statement we organizers of DocEng ’02, hold to an expansive notion of documents. A document is a representation of information designed for reading by, or played-back to, a person. It may be presented on paper, on a screen, or played through a speaker and its underlying representation may be in any form and include data from any medium. A document may be stored in final presentation form or in may be generated in the fly, undergoing substantial transformations in the process. A document may include extensive hyperlinks and be part of a large web of information. Furthermore, apparently independent documents may be composed, so that a web of information may itself be considered a document.

Information and knowledge management may harmoniously converge. Documentation deconstruction techniques reside upon a whole theory and methodology for dismantling a given document as to be able to analyze it in depth and to evaluate it and verify its accuracy, clarity and consistency, by also disclosing possible contradictions, multiple meanings and implications up to alternative readings.

Rhetoric may be therefore envisioned as the art of artificiality not only for representing meaning in literary texts, but also for constructing and reconstructing meaning in documents throughout the use of figures (from Latin: schemata, ‘structures’). Documental figures may be defined in terms of modification devices of ordinary language and ordinary text composition, meant to render the actual meaning.

We know well that in painting, we may really see objects and events represented as they really are and look like, only when the law of perspective is applied. In order to have a realistic perception of the painted object, it is absolutely mandatory to make artificial calculation and to use artificial devices as to make