What do you mean by documentation? Describe the purpose and function of documentation.
Introduction:
The word ‘Documentation’ derived from Document meaning official paper. Document means material that provides official information or evidence or that serves as a record. There is a tremendous growth in volume in publication in form of books, periodicals, Journals etc. It is difficult for the researcher to cope with the ever increasing literature. For the reason, libraries made experiments to adopt new techniques. This change brought into effect the work of Documentation.
Definition of Documentation:
Paul Otlet defined it as "the process by which are brought together, classified and distributed the documents of all areas of human activity".
According to ALA Glossary of library term,Documentation define as " the establishment, identification, collection and use of document."
Dr. S. R. Ranganathan has given a comparatively well definition of Documentation. He mentioned "Documentation means the complex of process involved in pinpointed, exhaustive and expeditious service of nascent micro thought to specialists".
Nature of Documentation
According to the definition of Dr. S. R. Ranganathan the natures of documentation are described bellow:
► It aims at providing pin-pointed information.
► It tries to ensure exhaustive treatment of a subject and it tries to provid external resources instead of traditional libraries.
► Expeditious or prompt service is another salient feature of documentation.
► It basically deals with specialized group of users.
► It gives emphasis on providing latest document so that the service will be more helpful to the researchers.
► It refers to recording of knowledge and the sources of knowledge, organizing such records systematically.
► It provides reprography service.
E Activities of Documentation
Dr. S. R. Ranganathan divided documentation into two parts:
1. Documentation work.
2. Documentation service –
Documentation work:
Documentation work is a technique of collecting,cataloguing, classifying and abstracting of both published and unpublished materials.
• The scopes of Documentation work are
a) Acquisition of periodicals and other sources containing micro-thoughts like monographs, journals, bulletins etc.
b) Selecting and working of items for documentation
c) Indexing
d) Arrangement
e) Classification
f) Compiling the items under suitable subject headings, title, author etc.
Documentation Service:
It is a process of reproducing any availablematerial and making it available to readers.
• The scopes of documentation service are:
a) Documentation list under CAS, CAO
b) Reprography (Reproduction of reading materials on demand in the form of microfilm, microform, etc.)
c) Ad hoc bibliographies as per needs of users on specific topics of research,
d) Translation Service,
e) Union Catalogues,
f) Reference service.
According to B. Guha, documentation refers to two sets of activities.
1. Active documentation:
2. Passive documentation:
Active documentation. It is compared to
documentation work. It denotes the works that are active always. Active documentation is involved with the following functions:
Abstracting; An abstract is a concise
presentation of an article or other literature in author's own language in the same order as in the original work.
ii) Indexing: An index is an alphabetical list of names of topics, place, title of
articles arranged in a suitable order to locate an item in the original work.
iii) Subject Bibliography: A subject bibliography is a systematic list of items on a Specific subject to help searcher to know the development of a subject.
iv) Translation Service: Original work of translation is not part of documentation process but to determine the areas where translation is needed is part of it.
v) CAS: Current Awareness Service is a process of alerting specialists in their own subject field.
vi) SDI: SDI is a personalized service. Relevant documents are channeled to readers in this method.
vii) Union Catalogue: Union catalogue is a key to the holdings of a group of libraries. It is consulted to locate a material that is not available in a given library.
viii) Reviews: Review is a survey of primary sources that aims to digest the literature for a given period.
Passive Documentation
• The essential characteristic of passive documentation is that it is carried out in response to specific request from users. It remains idle but becomes active after receiving queries from users. It is concerned with the service relating to the activities on demand. Passive documentation can be compared with documentation service.
i) Literature search and preparation of reading lists for users
ii) Location of documents
iii) Document procurement
iv) Location of translation
v) Reprographic activities.
Conclusion: From this discussion, we can
see that the whole documentation process isconcerned with the service of nascent thoughts of a subject. It is involved with the complex process of various steps. Though discussing the activities of documentation we can say that Ranganathan has rightly mentioned documentation as a complex of process involved in pinpointed, exhaustive and expeditious service of micro-thought to specialists.
