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How documents pour l’action organize and bind US society. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Manuel Zacklad’s concept of documents pour l’action are examined as highly embedded social objects using cultural anthropology and the robotics concept of stigmergy. Pragmatic literacy as opposed to scholarly or recreational literacy is used to inform the discussion.

–Documents pour l’action are more than memory devices that explain or describe. They function within highly structured social contexts to organize and bind US society.

Research on documents has been limited to their role as memory devices. Documents pour l’action are deeply embedded social objects. A new focus on pragmatic literacy could create many breakthroughs in the understanding of documents generally.

This is the first study of the role of documents as a binding force in a society, particularly with an understanding of how they can be understood through stigmergy.

The purpose of this paper is to begin a conversation about the term “nondocument.” It analyzes this term’s possible concepts, components and contexts.

This conceptual paper draws upon the work of documentation studies scholars, including Michael Buckland, Bernd Frohmann and Niels Windfeld Lund, to begin an exploration of the term “nondocument,” framed within the context of the 2013–2014 Israeli–Palestinian peace negotiations brokered by the USA. It is comprised of seven sections revolving around different questions regarding non-document.

The document at the center of the 2013–2014 Israeli–Palestinian peace negotiations aimed to establish a framework for an eventual final-status peace agreement. There was skepticism, however, about the document’s proposed reservations inscription permitting either party to express reservations with any part of the framework. It was claimed that this reservation inscription made the document self-negating and therefore a non-document. This document was arguably a hybrid entity: a document-non-document. It was a document in the context of the negotiations. It became a non-document in the context of the collapse of the negotiations.

The 2013–2014 peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine, brokered by the USA, revolved around a diplomatic document outlining provisions for a final peace settlement. The two parties were skeptical of a proposed provision permitting reservations to be expressed over other provisions within the document. An official involved in the negotiations stated that this provision made the document a non-document. But what exactly is meant by this term? This paper takes the opportunity to begin exploring such a notion. The aim, however, is not to definitively define non-document but instead to raise questions and provoke further discussions of this term.

The concept of non-document is underdeveloped. This paper presents questions and conceptual tools to help develop this term whilst providing possible points of departure for further examinations of how documents are or might be non-documents. These questions and tools also point in directions for various other approaches to phenomena that could be regarded as documents in some respects but not in others, or the ways in which something could is “almost” but “not quite” a document, or even help determine what is “not document.” Ultimately, this term could help expand other “conventional” approaches to documentation.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the language of “weeding” (library deselection) within public library collection development policies in order to examine whether such policies and practices can be usefully connected to library and information science (LIS) theory, specifically to “Deweyan pragmatic adaptation” as suggested by Buschman (2017) in the pages of this journal.

This is a policy analysis of collection deselection policies from the 50 public libraries serving US state capitals, using Bacchi’s policy problem representation technique.

“Weeding” as described by these public library collection deselection policies is clearly pragmatic and oriented to increasing circulation to patrons, but the “Deweyan pragmatic adaptation” as reflected by many of those reviewed might better be defined as the pragmatism of Melvil Dewey rather than that of John Dewey.

Although this work reviewed policies from a very small sample of US public libraries, collection, selection and deselection language as shown in the policies studied appear to be consistent with neoliberal priorities and values in terms of prioritizing “circulation” and “customers,” which may have additional implications for the current transition from print to electronic materials in public libraries

John Dewey’s political philosophy and Carol Bacchi’s policy problem representation technique have not been widely used in policy analysis by LIS researchers, and this paper offers a number of suggestions for similar public library policy investigations.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to a discussion about the future of librarianship.

An analytical framework is used to discuss the future of libraries. The framework is based on current trends in contemporary librarianship and is used as a way of structuring predictions about the future of librarianship. Special attention is given to public libraries and academic libraries.

Libraries are seen moving from a traditional situation with a high degree of constitutive documentality and internal legitimacy with collections in focus to one with a high degree of performative documentality and external legitimacy, with adjustment to user needs as the prime goal. This development is related to the emergence of New Public Management and can be seen both in public and academic libraries. It is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

The analytical framework and concepts used are originally developed for this text and prove to be valuable tools in fulfilling the purpose of the article. It represents a new and original way of discussing the future of libraries.