Suzanne Briet
Encyclopedia
Renée-Marie-Hélène-Suzanne Briet (bʁie, ˈbreɪ; 1 February 1894 in Ardennes
, France
- 1989 in Boulogne, France
), known as "Madame Documentation," was a librarian, author, historian, poet, and visionary best known for her treatise Qu'est-ce que la documentation? (What is Documentation?), a foundational text in the modern study of information science
. She is also known for her writings on the history of Ardennes
and the poet Arthur Rimbaud
.
Her treatise Qu'est-ce que la documentation? offers a vision of documentation that moves beyond Paul Otlet
's emphasis on fixed forms of documents, such as the book, toward "an unlimited horizon of physical forms and aesthetic formats for documents and an unlimited horizon of techniques and technologies (and of 'documentary agencies' employing these) in the service of multitudes of particular cultures." Like many early European Documentalists, Briet embraced modernity
and science
. However, her work made a difference to modernism and science through the influence of French
post-structuralist theorists and her strong orientation toward humanistic scholarship. She subsequently ushered in a second generation of European Documentation and introduced humanistic methods and concerns, especially semiotics
and cultural studies
, to information science
.
Although Briet had been highly regarded throughout much of her career—the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur
was conferred on her in 1950 — she was largely forgotten in her later life, until her death in 1989, when scholars found a renewed interest in her ideas. Today scholars often credit Briet as a visionary, having laid the foundation for contemporary frameworks and methodologies in information science roughly 50 years earlier. "Her modernist perspective," writes Michael Buckland
, "combined with semiotics, deserves attention now because it is different from, and offers an alternative to, the scientific, positivist
view that has so dominated information science and which is increasingly questioned."
, France
on 1 February 1894, coming of age at a time of great social change and economic loss in France after World War I
. Although Briet grew up in Paris
, she remained attached to her birthplace and ancestral home. Briet was only 20 at the outbreak of the war. Ardennes was the pathway of German armies invading France, and during the hostilities her uncle was deported, his village was invaded, and her grandfather's house was destroyed. Historians have suggested that perhaps because of her experiences during the war, as well as her travels to England
as a child, Briet took an early interest in the League of Nations
, sitting in on some of the sessions held in Paris, and the founding of other international organizations. Briet's mother expected her to become a teacher. Briet's family sent her to Ecole de Sèvres, an elite women's school for training secondary school teachers, where she earned a degree in history and qualified to teach English and history. After teaching in Algeria from 1917 to 1920, Briet pursued a career in librarianship. She studied with Louis Barrau-Dihigo at the Sorbonne
, who was apparently so taken with Briet's talents that "when Briet explained that she could only participate on Saturday, he changed the time of the course to accommodate her." At age 30 in 1924, Briet was one of the first of three women appointed as professional librarians at the Bibliothèque Nationale
.
, growing from only 10% of the library profession in 1927 to 50% by the end of the war. Her main achievements during these years were symbolic of her interest in service and moderninzation. Between 1934 and 1954, Briet created and supervised the Salle des Catalogues et Bibliographies, making available materials throughout France that had been previously restricted to most patrons. By 1931 she co-founded (with chemist Jean Gérard) the Union Française des Organismes de Documentation, the French analogue of the American Documentation Institution, today known as the American Society for Information Science and Technology
.
During World War II
, Briet witnessed many of her colleagues deported during the German occupation of Paris and others arrested as communists. Despite a climate of fear, censorship, oppression and physical hardship, Briet made sure to carry out the catalog and bibliographic services of the Bibliothèque Nationale. During the war, Briet continued her interest in Documentation, even attending a conference in Salzburg
, Germany
, which was organized by German Documentalists. At the end of the war, Briet took on a larger role in a growing international documentation movement. In 1950, she prepared an international survey of education for librarians and documentalists commissioned by UNESCO
and was awarded the Légion d'honneur
. In 1951 Briet helped establish the Institut National de Techniques de la Documentation at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
. She was the founding Director of Studies and eventually the Vice-President of the International Federation for Documentation.
That same year, Briet published her treatise Qu'est-ce que la documentation?, in which she outlines, in 48 pages, her philosophy of documentation, "pushing boundaries of the field beyond texts to include any material form of evidence. ('Is a living animal a document?' she asked.)" Her thirty year career at the Bibliothèque Nationale often put Briet in close contact with major French thinkers of the day, including scientists, historians, linguists, and philosophers, which had a significant impact on her philosophy. Briet retired from the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1954 at age 60. She wrote her last essays on documentation in 1955. She spent her retirement concentrating on other interests, including the history of Ardennes
and the poet Arthur Rimbaud
. Her memoirs were published in 1979. She died in Boulogne in 1989.
, and history
She took up many of the pressing issues of documentation in her day: internationalization
, institutionalization, information or documentary overload
, scholarly communication
, science and technology studies
, world peace
, and international development
. Briet had been deeply engaged in the documentation movement from the 1920s onward, bringing to it a deep understanding of culture and the humanities. Expanding on the techniques and technological ideas of earlier European Documentalists, such as Paul Otlet
and Henri La Fontaine
, "Briet understood that technology and culture were deeply connected. She saw society and, therefore, culture, as being re-shaped by technology. The techniques of documentation in aiding and shaping intellectual work were, in her view, both a symptom of, and contributing force within the 'industrialization' of knowledge workers. We can now see, in the impact of computers and telecommunications, how right she was." As one scholar notes, "Not again -- until Actor-network theory
at the end of the twentieth century -- would a social network account of technical production, and specifically, documentary production, be articulated."
Briet's body of work points to the necessity to understand cultural categories, historical lineages, and the social forces that create and sustain information, urging scholars and information professionals to explore beyond the boundaries of their cultural specialization. According to one scholar, "One of Briet's most important insights was that individual documents may be interpreted in different ways by different people wishing to put them to different uses for different purposes. This variability of interpretation is characteristic of documents even at the level of individual words, and the different decisions made by different translators at the word level can have significant consequences." Briet developed the notion of indice (literally "index") as not only pointing to an object but also reflective of the networks in which that object appears as a named thing, leading to a semiotics-inspired definition of "document." Furthermore, Briet argued that techniques and technologies are expressions of a networked culture. One scholar explains the idea this way: "Information and communication technologies may introduce a 'new rhythm' to society and culture, but they themselves are a "symptom" of Western social development." Thus, technique and technology are historically specific and symptomatic of culture. Briet argues that documentation must respond by incorporating these symptoms and specificities of Western culture but also must incorporate "Western modernity's opposite trend toward global expansion." Briet also saw knowledge as embedded and emergent in cultural and social production and saw modernity as the growth of networks of knowledge. Indeed, in an increasingly globalized world, Briet argued for documentation to take up the call of material necessity rather than be put into the service of culture or any one culture; that is, "documentation marks the importance of particular, more 'localized' or specialized cultures in terms of their material needs, their specialized vocabularies, and the techniques and technologies needed to provide documentary services to these groups."
Ardennes
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
- 1989 in Boulogne, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
), known as "Madame Documentation," was a librarian, author, historian, poet, and visionary best known for her treatise Qu'est-ce que la documentation? (What is Documentation?), a foundational text in the modern study of information science
Information science
-Introduction:Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information...
. She is also known for her writings on the history of Ardennes
Ardennes
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...
and the poet Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
.
Her treatise Qu'est-ce que la documentation? offers a vision of documentation that moves beyond Paul Otlet
Paul Otlet
Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet was an author, entrepreneur, visionary, lawyer and peace activist; he is one of several people who have been considered the father of information science, a field he called "documentation". Otlet created the Universal Decimal Classification, one of the most prominent...
's emphasis on fixed forms of documents, such as the book, toward "an unlimited horizon of physical forms and aesthetic formats for documents and an unlimited horizon of techniques and technologies (and of 'documentary agencies' employing these) in the service of multitudes of particular cultures." Like many early European Documentalists, Briet embraced modernity
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
. However, her work made a difference to modernism and science through the influence of French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
post-structuralist theorists and her strong orientation toward humanistic scholarship. She subsequently ushered in a second generation of European Documentation and introduced humanistic methods and concerns, especially semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
and cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
, to information science
Information science
-Introduction:Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information...
.
Although Briet had been highly regarded throughout much of her career—the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
was conferred on her in 1950 — she was largely forgotten in her later life, until her death in 1989, when scholars found a renewed interest in her ideas. Today scholars often credit Briet as a visionary, having laid the foundation for contemporary frameworks and methodologies in information science roughly 50 years earlier. "Her modernist perspective," writes Michael Buckland
Michael Buckland
Michael Keeble Buckland is an Emeritus Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information and Co-Director of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative....
, "combined with semiotics, deserves attention now because it is different from, and offers an alternative to, the scientific, positivist
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
view that has so dominated information science and which is increasingly questioned."
Early life
Suzanne Briet was born in ArdennesArdennes
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
on 1 February 1894, coming of age at a time of great social change and economic loss in France after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Although Briet grew up in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, she remained attached to her birthplace and ancestral home. Briet was only 20 at the outbreak of the war. Ardennes was the pathway of German armies invading France, and during the hostilities her uncle was deported, his village was invaded, and her grandfather's house was destroyed. Historians have suggested that perhaps because of her experiences during the war, as well as her travels to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
as a child, Briet took an early interest in the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
, sitting in on some of the sessions held in Paris, and the founding of other international organizations. Briet's mother expected her to become a teacher. Briet's family sent her to Ecole de Sèvres, an elite women's school for training secondary school teachers, where she earned a degree in history and qualified to teach English and history. After teaching in Algeria from 1917 to 1920, Briet pursued a career in librarianship. She studied with Louis Barrau-Dihigo at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
, who was apparently so taken with Briet's talents that "when Briet explained that she could only participate on Saturday, he changed the time of the course to accommodate her." At age 30 in 1924, Briet was one of the first of three women appointed as professional librarians at the Bibliothèque Nationale
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
.
Career
Briet's career at the Bibliothèque Nationale witnessed major changes in the library profession. Briet played a central role in the "modern library" movement, which eschewed elitist traditions that had dominated many libraries in favor of "modern" ideas of librarianship. In addition to technological innovations, Briet saw the emergence of documentation as a distinct profession with its own techniques, standards and training. Women also entered the professional classes in France in increasing numbers during World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, growing from only 10% of the library profession in 1927 to 50% by the end of the war. Her main achievements during these years were symbolic of her interest in service and moderninzation. Between 1934 and 1954, Briet created and supervised the Salle des Catalogues et Bibliographies, making available materials throughout France that had been previously restricted to most patrons. By 1931 she co-founded (with chemist Jean Gérard) the Union Française des Organismes de Documentation, the French analogue of the American Documentation Institution, today known as the American Society for Information Science and Technology
American Society for Information Science and Technology
The American Society for Information Science and Technology, sometimes abbreviated ASIS&T or ASIST, is a non-profit membership organization for information professionals...
.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Briet witnessed many of her colleagues deported during the German occupation of Paris and others arrested as communists. Despite a climate of fear, censorship, oppression and physical hardship, Briet made sure to carry out the catalog and bibliographic services of the Bibliothèque Nationale. During the war, Briet continued her interest in Documentation, even attending a conference in Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, which was organized by German Documentalists. At the end of the war, Briet took on a larger role in a growing international documentation movement. In 1950, she prepared an international survey of education for librarians and documentalists commissioned by UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
and was awarded the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
. In 1951 Briet helped establish the Institut National de Techniques de la Documentation at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
The Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers , or National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, is a doctoral degree-granting higher education establishment operated by the French government, dedicated to providing education and conducting research for the promotion of science and industry...
. She was the founding Director of Studies and eventually the Vice-President of the International Federation for Documentation.
That same year, Briet published her treatise Qu'est-ce que la documentation?, in which she outlines, in 48 pages, her philosophy of documentation, "pushing boundaries of the field beyond texts to include any material form of evidence. ('Is a living animal a document?' she asked.)" Her thirty year career at the Bibliothèque Nationale often put Briet in close contact with major French thinkers of the day, including scientists, historians, linguists, and philosophers, which had a significant impact on her philosophy. Briet retired from the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1954 at age 60. She wrote her last essays on documentation in 1955. She spent her retirement concentrating on other interests, including the history of Ardennes
Ardennes
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...
and the poet Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
. Her memoirs were published in 1979. She died in Boulogne in 1989.
Impact on Information Science
Briet published roughly 100 essays, books, and reports on documentation, library scienceLibrary science
Library science is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources; and the...
, and history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
She took up many of the pressing issues of documentation in her day: internationalization
Internationalization
In economics, internationalization has been viewed as a process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets, although there is no agreed definition of internationalization or international entrepreneurship...
, institutionalization, information or documentary overload
Information overload
"Information overload" is a term popularized by Alvin Toffler in his bestselling 1970 book Future Shock. It refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information...
, scholarly communication
Scholarly communication
Scholarly communication is an umbrella term used to describe the process of academics, scholars and researchers sharing and publishing their research findings so that they are available to the wider academic community and beyond....
, science and technology studies
Science and technology studies
Science, technology and society is the study of how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how these, in turn, affect society, politics and culture...
, world peace
World peace
World Peace is an ideal of freedom, peace, and happiness among and within all nations and/or people. World peace is an idea of planetary non-violence by which nations willingly cooperate, either voluntarily or by virtue of a system of governance that prevents warfare. The term is sometimes used to...
, and international development
International development
International development or global development is a concept that lacks a universally accepted definition, but it is most used in a holistic and multi-disciplinary context of human development — the development of greater quality of life for humans...
. Briet had been deeply engaged in the documentation movement from the 1920s onward, bringing to it a deep understanding of culture and the humanities. Expanding on the techniques and technological ideas of earlier European Documentalists, such as Paul Otlet
Paul Otlet
Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet was an author, entrepreneur, visionary, lawyer and peace activist; he is one of several people who have been considered the father of information science, a field he called "documentation". Otlet created the Universal Decimal Classification, one of the most prominent...
and Henri La Fontaine
Henri La Fontaine
Henri La Fontaine , was a Belgian international lawyer and president of the International Peace Bureau. He received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1913.-Biography:...
, "Briet understood that technology and culture were deeply connected. She saw society and, therefore, culture, as being re-shaped by technology. The techniques of documentation in aiding and shaping intellectual work were, in her view, both a symptom of, and contributing force within the 'industrialization' of knowledge workers. We can now see, in the impact of computers and telecommunications, how right she was." As one scholar notes, "Not again -- until Actor-network theory
Actor-network theory
Actor–network theory, often abbreviated as ANT, is a distinctive approach to social theory and research which originated in the field of science studies...
at the end of the twentieth century -- would a social network account of technical production, and specifically, documentary production, be articulated."
Briet's body of work points to the necessity to understand cultural categories, historical lineages, and the social forces that create and sustain information, urging scholars and information professionals to explore beyond the boundaries of their cultural specialization. According to one scholar, "One of Briet's most important insights was that individual documents may be interpreted in different ways by different people wishing to put them to different uses for different purposes. This variability of interpretation is characteristic of documents even at the level of individual words, and the different decisions made by different translators at the word level can have significant consequences." Briet developed the notion of indice (literally "index") as not only pointing to an object but also reflective of the networks in which that object appears as a named thing, leading to a semiotics-inspired definition of "document." Furthermore, Briet argued that techniques and technologies are expressions of a networked culture. One scholar explains the idea this way: "Information and communication technologies may introduce a 'new rhythm' to society and culture, but they themselves are a "symptom" of Western social development." Thus, technique and technology are historically specific and symptomatic of culture. Briet argues that documentation must respond by incorporating these symptoms and specificities of Western culture but also must incorporate "Western modernity's opposite trend toward global expansion." Briet also saw knowledge as embedded and emergent in cultural and social production and saw modernity as the growth of networks of knowledge. Indeed, in an increasingly globalized world, Briet argued for documentation to take up the call of material necessity rather than be put into the service of culture or any one culture; that is, "documentation marks the importance of particular, more 'localized' or specialized cultures in terms of their material needs, their specialized vocabularies, and the techniques and technologies needed to provide documentary services to these groups."
Select bibliography
- Briet, Suzanne.(1960). Le maréchal de Schulemberg, Jean III, comte de Montdejeux, 1598-1671. Mezières: Éditions de la Société d'études ardennaises.
- Briet, Suzanne.(1960). Madame Rimbaud, essai de biographie, suivi de la correspondance de Vitalie Rimbaud-Cuif dont treize lettres ineÌdites. Paris: Lettres modernes, Minard.
- Briet, Suzanne.(1956). Rimbaud notre prochain. Paris: Nouvelles Éditions latines.
- Briet, Suzanne.(1951). Qu'est-ce que la documentation? Paris: Éditions documentaires, industrielles et techniques.