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Michael Buckland's works have spanned theoretical, historical and practice-oriented foci and genre. This article focuses on some of his theoretical-historical works that span over 20 years, which demonstrate a reading and critique of European Documentation in terms of what has been called “Documentality.” This turn to a philosophy of information called “Documentality” marks the moment of “neo-documentation.” This article surveys this moment in Buckland's works by reading his articles “Information as Thing,” “What is a ‘Document’?”, and “Documentality Beyond Documents.” It shows the transition from Documentation as a philosophy of information as representation to Documentality as a philosophy of information as function and performance. Some concepts and works of Bruno Latour are used to illuminate this transition from Documentation to Documentality. Implications and further research directions are discussed at the end.

Conceptual and historical analyses.

The article follows a neo-documentalist transition in Buckland's works in the thinking of documents from an Otletian representationalist epistemology (“Documentation”) to a functionalist and performative epistemology (“Documentality”) for documents.

This is a conceptual work on a limited corpus in Buckland's oeuvre. It has a limited discussion of Documentality in the works of other writers, namely the works of Bernd Frohmann and Maurizio Ferraris.

The article points to historical shifts in the study of documents in Library and Information Science.

Documentality critically and materially studies documents in sociotechnical information management systems and elsewhere.

This work highlights the importance of the above works and the importance of the neo-documentalist perspective of Documentality.

There has been a massive investment in the installation of online catalogs: in selection, in the supporting infrastructure of terminals and networks, in catalog record conversion, in training, and, lately, in linking online catalogs with other online systems. In contrast, the state‐of‐the‐art of the functionality of online library catalogs has advanced little in the past few years. Rather it has been a matter of existing systems being upgraded towards the functionality of the better systems and of refinements being added. It is time for a further advance in online catalog design. We believe that the next generation of online catalogs should and will have features such as those discussed and illustrated in this article.

This article examines the structure and components of information storage and retrieval systems and information filtering systems. Analysis of the tasks performed in such selection systems leads to the identification of 13 components. Eight are necessarily present in all such systems, mechanized or not; the others may, but need not be, present. The authors argue that all selection systems can be represented in terms of combinations of these components. The components are of only two types: representations of data objects and functions that operate on them. Further, the functional components, or rules, reduce to two basic types: 1) transformation, making or modifying the members of a set of representations, and 2) sorting or partitioning. The representational transformations may be in the form of copies, excerpts, descriptions, abstractions, or mere identifying references. By partitioning, we mean dividing a set of objects by using matching, sorting, ranking, selecting, and other logically equivalent operations. The typical multiplicity of knowledge sources and of system vocabularies is noted. Some of the implications for the study, use, and design of information storage and retrieval systems are discussed.

Libraries assemble very large quantities of materials. These collections perform three quite different roles: archival, dispensing, and bibliographic. The bibliographic role of the collection is compared with bibliographies and catalogues. The distinction between materials and collection development is basic. Collection development in libraries is analogous to file organisation in computing systems and, although commonly viewed narrowly as selection for acquisition, includes a range of decisions which determine the profile of any collection. The rise of remotely‐accessible materials makes possession less important relative to access, has important consequences for all three roles of collections, and indicates a shift in emphasis away from collection development and conventional catalogues and toward bibliography and cooperation.

This paper offers a definition of the core of information science, which encompasses most research in the field. The definition provides a unique identity for information science and positions it in the disciplinary universe.

After motivating the objective, a definition of the core and an explanation of its key aspects are provided. The definition is related to other definitions of information science before controversial discourse aspects are briefly addressed: discipline vs. field, science vs. humanities, library vs. information science and application vs. theory. Interdisciplinarity as an often-assumed foundation of information science is challenged.

Information science is concerned with how information is manifested across space and time. Information is manifested to facilitate and support the representation, access, documentation and preservation of ideas, activities, or practices, and to enable different types of interactions. Research and professional practice encompass the infrastructures – institutions and technology –and phenomena and practices around manifested information across space and time as its core contribution to the scholarly landscape. Information science collaborates with other disciplines to work on complex information problems that need multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to address them.

The paper argues that new information problems may change the core of the field, but throughout its existence, the discipline has remained quite stable in its central focus, yet proved to be highly adaptive to the tremendous changes in the forms, practices, institutions and technologies around and for manifested information.

Considerable attention has been paid, in this journal and elsewhere, to each of two aspects of the use of literature. One of these is the relative decrease in use of material as it ages (‘obsolescence’) which has been discussed by Brookes and many others. The other aspect is the extent to which the use of material tends to be concentrated in a few titles (‘Bradford's Law of scattering’), which has been treated by Bradford, Leimkuhler, Brookes, and Fairthorne.

The great majority of academic libraries find themselves in a vast and often unmarked territory between two polar sets of goals and aspirations. These two poles could be represented by the model of the great research library, on the one hand, and the discount store, on the other. In choosing the first ideal, the library decides to acquire as broad a selection of research materials as possible, including infrequently used primary materials (census records, publications from limited editions, personal manuscripts, and unpublished pamphlets) in order that researchers may, at least in theory, find the collection all‐ or nearly all‐sufficient. Holders of this view point with pride to the contents of the catalog. At the other pole, the library sets out to be as responsive to demand as possible, to provide more and more of the materials which “move off the shelves” and, like the discount store, to discontinue stock items which are less popular than something more attractive which might replace them. Advocates of this view point with pride to the swarming circulation desk.