The Brazilian Neodocumentalist Movement: an Historical Perspective

This article presents early studies on the repercussion of the neo-documentation movement in Brazilian Information Science, through a literary review on the history and evolution of Documentation in Brazil. Some currently approached questions by Brazilian researchers are presented here, with regard to the document and documentation under the neo-documentation perspective. Based on the work of these Brazilian researchers, by means of reconstituting the theoretical steps in the construction of these researches, it is traced to the pathways that indicate an original Brazilian Information Science neo-documentation movement. It is recommended that the subject be widely explored in the future, for being a rich source of Information Science historiography.


INTRODUCTION
One of the most complex information science concepts, besides the information concept, is the document concept. To discuss the document in Information Science is no easy feat, as it is the center of discussions of other areas, such as History, Archeology, Record-Keeping, Museology, among others (Lara, 2010). In fact, tracing a timeline of the concept of document in Information Science leads to a time before its emergence, more precisely, and inevitably, to Paul Otlet (1868-1944 and classical Documentation. In his "Traité de Documentation" (1934), Otlet speaks on Documentation practices, and also on the expanded concept of "document", which, in its more general definition, would be "a basis for a determined material and of determined dimension, the eventual result of a determined folding or of roll montage, where the representative signs of certain intellectual data are placed" (Otlet, 2018, p.59).
Otlet's thoughts on what could be considered a document widened the concept beyond written record. The Documentation proposed by Paul Otlet concerns both the means of producing and utilizing the documents, as well as the hermeneutical feature of finding ways and methods to effectively represent the author's message . Otletian thinking is a breakthrough in the evolution of the documentation movement.
Documentation found its continuation in Suzanne Briet (1894Briet ( -1989. Briet, a French librarian, published her 1951 book "Qu'est-ce que la documentation?", a manifesto on the nature of documentation, in which she refers to the document as an evidence supporting a fact (Buckland, 1998). Briet defines document as something that can be used as proof or evidence of a fact, and also presents her famous antelope example, which recounts the time a new species of antelope was found by an explorer in Africa, and as the antelope is disseminated and studied, documents are originated from the live animal until after its death. Thus, making the cataloged antelope the primary document, and those that originated from it, secondary documents (Briet, 2016).
However, Documentation was forgotten for a period, being resumed in the 1960s by French researchers worried about reading, documentation, history of books, media, and culture, as stated by Ortega (2009). In countries like France and Spain, the study on Documentation continued with researchers such as Jean Meyriat, Roland Barthes, Sagredo Fernández and Izquierdo Arroyo, Martínez Comeche, among others.
Despite its grandeur for the time, the thinking of Paul Otlet could not reach or keep itself present in schools of thought, such as in the United States of America, for example. The motivating factors for this are the choices and interests, be it of pragmatic or conceptual character, that guided Documentation and Library Science to different paths, later resulting in the American Information Science, which carries the results of this forked path.
In the US, studies on Documentation did not have this continuation because the term was rapidly replaced by Specialized Librarianship (Ortega, 2009). With that, in the English language, Otlet and his documentalist ideals were forgotten until W. Boyd Rayward, an Australian librarian, published his work "The universe of information: the work of Paul Otlet for documentation and international organization" (1975) and later studies, which would make him as known as biographer Paul Otlet. Then, in the same line of discovery, the work of Suzanne Briet comes alongside the name of Michael K. Buckland, him being responsible for sharing her work in English, as stated by Ortega and Saldanha (2018), when publishing the article "The Centenary of Madame Documentation" (1995) and even before that, by mentioning her famous antelope in the article "Information as thing" (1991). Therefore, from the works of these authors, the ideals of classical Documentation of Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet became known to other researchers, who also began their studies on the document and information under a new perspective, known as Neo-documentation.
This article presents early studies on the repercussion of the neodocumentation movement in Brazilian Information Science, through a literature review on the history and evolution of Documentation in Brazil. Some currently approached questions by Brazilian researchers are presented here, with regard to the document and documentation under the neo-documentation perspective, without the pretension of presenting a state-of-the-art scenario. Based on the work of these Brazilian researchers, by means of reconstituting the theoretical steps in the construction of these researches, it is possible to trace the pathways that indicate an original Brazilian Information Science neo-documentation movement.

PATHS OF THE NEO-DOCUMENTATION MOVEMENT IN INFORMATION SCIENCE
The neo-documentation movement has begun between the 1990s and 2000s and "is set in the scope of a world intersected by 'digital determinism', where the web features one of the central stages for the acts of man" (Saldanha, 2013, p. 73). Therefore, discussions around the concept of information in the digital era made it necessary to rethink the concept of document, to bring a fresh perspective that could enable a more thorough comprehension of the information recorded, which is the document, in the digital environment. Furthermore, the movement is "(…) one which, as indicated by its name, seeks to revitalize another movement that is found in institutional, professional, technical, and theoretical dimensions of documentation" (Araújo, 2018, p. 69).
of the French National Center for Scientific Research, headed by Jean-Michael Salaün, launched a piece titled "Document: form, sign and medium, as reformulated for electronic documents" (2003), signed under the pseudonym Roget T. Pedauque, whose goal was to investigate the differences between the traditional and the electronic document, and the consequences of this transition. The motivation for such research came from the necessity of defining the digital document. Today, the lack of clarity is an issue: the electronic format is revolutionizing the concept of document, but there is no way to precisely measure the impact and consequences, due to a lack of clear outlines [of the concept of document] (Pédauque, 2003, p. 2).
In these researchers' work, recognized as neo-documentalist, the intention is to broaden the documental issue, bringing elements of language, philosophy, and social context, for example. Besides "by abandoning the document and focusing on the information, understood as the objective content of documents, Information Science has divorced the social, political, economic, and cultural practices from which information is produced" (Araújo, 2018, p.70). The document now appears at the center of human, social, scientific, and technological relations. "The power games underneath the skin of language, and the structures and superstructures that condition both the life of document as its invention are fundamentals of a contemporary notion of document that crosses digital networks" (Ortega & Saldanha, 2019, p.17).
Also, as a representative of neo-documentation is the group Document Academy, a "global collective that promotes Documentation and documents of all kinds" (Document Academy, online). The group was idealized from the encounter of Michael Buckland, W. Boyd Rayward and Niels Lund in 1996, named and founded by Niels Lund and Maribeth Back in 2001, with their first meeting being held in 2003, at University of Berkeley, California (Document Academy, online). Since then, the group dedicates to research on new relations between document, information, and technology.
This approach brought visibility to the concepts present in Classical Documentation and improved the space for those interested in discussing a new documentalist vision, "the current theorists of documentation can focus on the diversity of document and study the wide range of issues associated with the processes of documentation, and the documents resulting from these" (Lund, 2009, p.41). Rodrigues (2018) presents an analysis on the current publications in the group's open access journal, Proceedings from the Document Academy, in which it is possible to identify some characteristics of the neo-documentation strand, aiding in the understanding of this movement, as it is one still without a defined conceptual corpus, making it a vast field for exploration, since this new approach is very important "as a result of the effort of comprehending the field beyond the ideas and methods more widely spread, bringing to the English language the repertoire of ideas relegated to the French language and its users; among them, many Brazilian researchers" (Ortega & Saldanha, 2018, p.112).
Rediscovering Documentation and the legacy of Otlet-Briet allows the reconstitution of the history of Information Science, because it "[…] involves much more than just a reflection on the electronic revolution of the mid-20 th century, but, also, on the study of the history of science and technology, printing, and editing of information institutions" (Saldanha 2013, p. 70). Niels Lund (2009) concluded that, in the post-modernism, something similar to the documentation movement led by Otlet and others a hundred years ago is taking place, which he calls a new scale of re-documentation, making the very concept of document, currently, very useful for epistemological discussions on Information Science, as stated by Ortega and Saldanha (2017).
This movement, as like in the USA, France, and Canada, also involves Brazilian researchers who dedicate their research to the new interactions between document and information, with similar bias and characteristics to those present in the neo-documentation strand, presenting works on the concept of document, the historiography of Information Science in the country, taken from the long history of Documentation in Brazil.
In a brief summary of the Brazilian context, the influence of Documentation is dated by Juvêncio and Rodrigues (2016, p. 278) when "Victor da Silva Freire writes about the Brazilian need for participation in the Belgian initiative of diffusion and access to information" in 1900, then in 1909 when Manoel Cícero Peregrino da Silva, then head of the National Library, adhered to the ideals of the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB). Then, we reach Lydia de Queiroz Sambaquy, a Brazilian librarian who also participated in the diffusion of Otletian ideals in Brazil, disseminated by Nanci Odonne (2004), who showed the importance of initiative in the early days of Information Science in the country. The idealization of the Brazilian Institute of Bibliography and Documentation (IBBD), founded in 1954, with "the support of policies for national bibliographical centers of Unesco" (Odonne, 2006), is a great feat of Sambaquy's, an act of vanguard, as stated by Pinheiro (2013).
When it comes to theoretical-conceptual influences, Ortega (2009) states that, between American and European resources, Information Science in Brazil fluctuated between both. However, the former ended up exerting greater influence, which resulted in sending Brazil in the path to form an Information Science based on the one determined by the United States of America.
Consequently, there are two situations pointed out by Ortega and Saldanha (2018): there are Brazilian researchers who, under strong Anglo-American neodocumentation influence, now produce their researches and proposals on Documentation as new studies, and those who, despite the time gap, have resumed the studies initiated by Documentation.

THE JOURNEY OF DOCUMENTATION IN BRAZIL
The influence of classic Documentation ideals proposed by Paul Otlet has had several moments, oscillations, and enthusiasts. Despite the history of Library Science and Documentation in Brazil figuring a long and continuous series of facts linked together with precision and naturality, the trajectory of the field is characterized by recurring ruptures (Odonne, 2006, p. 47). Between the late 19 th century and the early 20 th century, some facts collaborated to the adhesion of these ideals in Brazil, as we will see shortly.
The first record found, dated 1898, when the Senate asks the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) to organize its works, and justifies it with an identical quote used by Paul Otlet and Henry La Fontaine in the first issue of the Bulletin L'Institut International de Bibliographie, of 1985 (Juvêncio, 2016, p.124).
In the following years, there is a succession of actors in this process of reaching Otletian ideals, such as Juliano Moreira, as member of the IIB, who was also responsible for the adoption of DDC, in the journal Annals of Medical and Surgical Society of Bahia, which he headed. Oswaldo Cruz also adopted the DDC in his research institute, Victor da Silva Freira, previously mentioned, already believedas did Paul Otlet and Henry La Fontainein utilizing information sources as a means of progress for nations; and Manoel Cícero Peregrino da Silva, head of the Brazilian National Library who, in 1911, launched the Bibliography and Documentation Service, which demonstrated affinity and alignment to the Otletian ideal, making him a precursor of Documentation in Brazil (Juvêncio & Rodrigues, 2016;Ortega, 2009).
The thinking of Paul Otlet and Henry La Fontaine influenced Peregrino da Silva, and he applied it to the National Library, enjoying the opportunities the process offered (Juvêncio, 2016, p. 134). As director of the National Library between 1900 to 1924 (Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, online), Peregrino da Silva sought inspiration in both their projects to modernize the library and kept active contact, at the time, with the International Institute of Bibliography.
Among the initiatives, one fact stood out. Rayward (1975) relates a request for 600 thousand catalog records made to the Universal Bibliographic Repertory (UBR) in 1991, of which Juvêncio (2016) claims 341,697 were delivered between the years 1911 and 1913. Still in 1913, an employee of the National Library was sent to study the practices of IIB. Cícero de Britto Galvão was the official in charge of the UBR records and was appointed by Peregrino da Silva for the trip to Brussels (Juvêncio, 2016, p. 178). However, none of the work elaborated by Peregrino da Silva was continued. Years went by until that, in the 1950s, with the emergence of the Brazilian Institute of Bibliography and Documentation (IBBD) "the dream and plan of this Brazilian Otlet, who was pernambucano 1 Peregrino da Silva, came true" (Fonseca, 1973, p.89).
In the years that followed, Brazilian Library Science became strongly influenced by American Library Science, which resulted, in the mid-1930s, in the withdrawal of DDC from libraries, only being taken up again around the 1950s (Ortega, 2004), when the Brazilian Institute of Bibliography and Documentation (IBBD) was created in 1954, under the command of Lydia de Queiroz Sambaquy, who implemented a new regime, posture and mentality in the institute, contaminated by the concept of Documentation (Odonne, 2004, p.114), at a time when the issues proposed by Otlet were no longer in vogue in Brazil, unlike other places.
In the 1950s, UNESCO was interested in the creation of documentation services in various countries and Brazil felt the same. Thus, in 1952, Lydia de Queiroz Sambaquy and Jannice de Melo Monte-mor were appointed to visit centers of documentation in Europe and the United States of America (Fonseca, 1973;Odonne, 2006), resulting in the elaboration of the IBBD project, Lydia's initiative, as stated by Odonne (2004).
Still in the context of the early years of IBBD, Herbert Coblans, a chemical engineer, specialized in scientific documentation, came to teach a course on Documentation, approaching issues regarding scientific information (Fonseca, 1973). The IBBD Library had been designed to be "one of the first libraries specialized in bibliography in Brazil (…), gathering collections, as complete as possible, from library catalogs, national bibliographies, specialized bibliographies, indexes and abstracts of scientific technological literature of all times and of all places" (Zaher, 1967, p. 91), ambitions which remind us of the universalist ideals of Paul Otlet.
The idealization and emergence of the IBBD represented a new regime of information in Brazil, "influenced at the same time by Library Science, Documentation and by the very modern concept of 'scientific information', this new regime established the possibility for the future arrival of Information Science" (Odonne, 2006, p.49).
The presence of Documentation in these institutions, so important for the development of Library Science and Information Science, provides us with integral information on the formation of these early professionals, because the National Library, when headed by Peregrino da Silva, was responsible for the first course of Library Science in the country, back in 1910, as well as IBBD in the 1970s offered the first master's degree in Information Science in Brazil (Juvêncio, 2016;Fonseca, 1973;Odonne, 2020). And as a representative of the institutionalization of Documentation ideas, IBBD carried it in its name until 1976, when it becomes the Brazilian Institute for Information Science and Technology (IBICT).
Still on the topic of access to classic documentalist ideals, a translation of the 1970s classic work of Suzanne Briet, by Maria de Nazareth Rocha Furtado, then a student of Library Science and French language at the Fluminense Federal University, was completed with the aim of helping other students (Saldanha & Ortega, 2018). This translation is only formalized years later in 2016, when the publication would become official, published by the Briquet de Lemos publisher, in digital format and in Portuguese. This same publishing house was also responsible by the first Portuguese Language edition of the Traité de Documentation by Paul Otlet, in 2018, as the result of a joint effort. The translation of Otlet's work is a significant step for documentation studies in Brazil, as it allowed a wider reach of the author's ideas, even by students and researchers at the start of their careers.
Later on, other researchers like Edson Nery da Fonseca, Antonio Briquet de Lemos, Célia Ribeiro Zaher, Hagar Espanha Gomes dedicated their studies to questions surrounding Documentation (Ortega, 2009;Odonne, 2004). However, their peers' adoption of Library Science principles still showed some resistance, for example, when "Brazilian Library Science tried to promote the annexation of Documentation to its domain in the 1980s, this intent was officially denied (Odonne, 2004, p.117). The studies of Documentation maintained their bond through the TEMMA Group, originating from the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, which had as their object of study the field of Documentary Analysis, and thanks to the Brazilian researcher Johanna Smit, brought to Brazilian Library Sciences the French thinking of authors like Jean Meyriat and Jean-Claude Gardin, who, in France, continued the documentalist thinking (Saldanha & Ortega, 2018;Ortega, 2009), contributing to the interdisciplinary dialog of Documentation, Library Science and Linguistics (Souza & Oliveira, 2007;Lara, 2012). Therefore, since de 2000s, research on the theme of document and documentation has gained space in Brazilian Information Science.

THE NEO-DOCUMENTALIST VESTIGES IN BRAZILIAN INFORMATION SCIENCES
The production of research in Brazilian Information Science on document and documentation theory allows the tracing of not only a historical conceptual panorama, but also the comprehension of the influences it has received throughout its journey, allowing for a historical reconstitution that will guide us to a panorama.
Ortega indicates three moments that describe the history of Documentation in Brazil, […] at the beginning of the 20 th century, with the involvement with the project of the International Institute of Bibliography; from the 1940s, in a movement that led to the creation of the Brazilian Institute of Bibliography and Documentation in 1954, until the introduction of the American strand of Information Science in Brazil; and from the 1980s, with the beginning of the TEMMA study group, of ECA/USP (Ortega, 2009, p.74).
These moments, detailed in the previous topic, provide the signs of evolution in Documentation, and guide us toward the early neo-documentation vestiges that can be identified in Brazilian Information Science. Nonetheless, here we do not propose a state-of-the-art on documental discussions, but rather an introduction to the perspective of researchers in Brazil, indicating a truly Brazilian strand of thought.
To this purpose, it is necessary to limit the subjects that compose the neodocumentation approach, subsequently, limiting us to present only a small share of authors. As stated by Saldanha (2013, p. 70), "if we take 'neo-documentation' beyond a 'strand', but rather to a solid, distinctive and provocative discourse (…)" there is a fertile land to learn historical and conceptual questions of Brazilian Information Science, as this movement involves "(…) much more than a reflection on the electronic revolution of the mid-20 th century, but also the study of the history of science and technology, the printing and editing of information institutions" (Saldanha, 2013, p. 70), that is, the discussions go beyond the concept of document, but also partake in the recovery of the epistemological and historiographic construction of Information Science, these being the two reference subjects for the limiting of the neo-documentation approach here presented. Ortega and Saldanha (2018) state that today in Brazil, neo-documentalist writing has been done by several researchers and students, split between those better related to the classical view of Documentation and those who seek reference in neo-documentalists themselves, but the most important fact is that "these authors compose the international movement of the return of studies on document, by bringing about a wider and diverse exploration on the term 'information', sparking production on the concept of document in the country" (Ortega & Saldanha, 2018, p.111). Freitas, Marcondes and Rodrigues (2010) indicate the first steps to studies regarding document in Brazil, following the precepts of the neo-documentation movement and due to the fact that Brazilian Information Science is strongly influenced by anglophone Information Science, despite the heavy influence of French Documentation, as previously stated.
As it is a recent movement, there is still plenty to learn, to detect the moment it begins to gain a name and provide identity to the movement, helping to identify its limitations. In his research, Rodrigues (2018) maps some of the moments when it is possible to identify the terms used in anglophone and francophone language, such as the article "Document, documentation, and the Document Academy: introduction" (2008); Michael Buckland and Niels Lund speak of a neo-documentation agenda, as well as the term re-documentation appears in the work "La redocumentarisation du monde" (2007), by the initiative RTP-Doc. Lund affirms that re-documentation is "the francophone term for the neo-documentation movement" (Lund, 2009, p. 39).
In Brazil, from the 1920s up until what can be mapped, appearances of the terms neo-documentalist, neo-documentation, neo-documentalist begin to pop up in publications of Brazilian authors, like in the works "Document: genesis and contexts of use" (2010), organized by Lidia Silva de Freitas, Carlos Henrique Marcondes and Ana Célia Rodrigues, and also in "Information Science and Documentation" (2011), organized by Giullia Crippa and Solange Puntel Mostafa. When a search was conducted in the Brazilian open access database for scientific publications IBICT, Oasisbr 2 , with the term neo-documentation, ten results were found, six being articles, one a bachelor's degree monography, one a master's degree dissertation, and two doctoral theses. The publications ranged from 2012 to 2020.
However, it is necessary to bear in mind two facts. Firstly, the emergence of the movement before the nomenclatures. If we consider Saldanha's definition, which defines neo-documentation as "(…) at first, a discourse that comments on the works of the first 'documentalists', namely the canon Otlet-Briet" (Saldanha, 2013, p. 71), we can state that, necessarily, the works of neo-documentalist nature haven't always had this term indexed, as the thesis on Paul Otlet written by Rayward in 1975, as well as Suzanne Briet's concepts appearing in Buckland in the 1990s. Thus, the use of these term only aids in the formation of identity of the movement.
Furthermore, it is not only because they have the term indexed, which grants these researches a neo-documentation character. Several works that use this approach do not necessarily present this term in their text. The example of the search in Oasisbr, serves to show that there is already an understanding that the works of these researchers are part of, comment on or use the neo-documentation ideals; not forgetting that researches can use the term but not index it to the database, and not even show the term as a keyword or in the abstract. Thus, the Brazilian neo-documentation movement can take us back to a time before the appearance of the term in Brazil Freitas (2010) identifies two strands of research, one focused on the pragmatic or operational approach, and the other on the philosophical or epistemological approach. From the epistemological-philosophical approach,through criticizing the called dominant 'information paradigm'conceptual contributions to the document construct emerge from the historical and institutional relations they constitute as a sociocultural object (Freitas, 2010, p.147). Rodrigues (2018 suggests some of the themes present in the Brazilian Treasury of Information Science, in which anglophonic neo-documentation researchers contribute, for example, to discussions on Information Science Epistemology. As a parameter to aid in the identifying of Brazilian neo-documentation researches, we utilize one of the statements made by Ortega and Saldanha (2017, p.16) that "currently recognized as neo-documentation researchers such as Boyd Rayward, Niels Lund, Michael Buckland, Bernd Frohmann, Ronald Day, among others, hold the merit of diffusing the European production on Documentation from the early 20 th century to English-speaking readers".
In Brazil, when considering the history of the strong presence and influence of documentation up until the mid-1960s, these ideas were known, which favored the resuming of documentalist discussions, thus "the incursions of neodocumentalists had repercussions with the increase in national reflections concerning the concept of document, which articulate the peculiarities of conforming Brazilian Information Science to anglophonic production, consequently approaching in larger or minor scale the Otletian and/or Brietian ideas" (Moura, 2015, p.18).
Based on these premises, we have the works of researchers who, simultaneously to the development of this documentalist turning point in the 2000s, focused on Documentation and the concept of document. That is the case of Cristina Dotta Ortega 3 (2004, 2007, 2009 and her researches on the historical relationship 4 (2008,2009,2011), produced works on the concept of document. As well as Nancy 5 6 (2009, 2010), is another researcher dedicated to the studies of document, with her previously cited work from 2010, which is one of the first to bear the term neo-documentalist.
After 2010, we have more researchers who recover the history of Documentation and, also, others who already discuss documental questions propelled by the neo-documentation movement. As does Carlos Henrique Juvêncio 7 (2014Juvêncio 7 ( , 2016, who raises the first relations between Otlet's ideals and the National Library and Gustavo S. Saldanha 8 (2012Saldanha 8 ( , 2013Saldanha 8 ( , 2014 who authored critical studies on the movement. The work of these researchers represents a share of what is produced and discussed about Documentation and the concept of document in Brazilian Information Science in the last decades. These works indicate the two directions that Saldanha and Ortega (2018) indicate: the researchers who are directly influenced by French Documentation and those who start debating at the neodocumentation strand. These works pave the way for other questions surrounding these themes, and can facilitate the dissemination of the neo-documentation movement in Brazilian Information Science, because if such movement aims for the recovery of the history of concepts and Otletian and Brietian ideals, such as historiography, more in-depth studies would gain traction in the field, since "reconstituting the history of Information Science in Brazil seems, therefore, essential to the whole perception of possible conditions regarding its definition as a field of knowledge" (Odonne, 2020, p.6).

FINAL CONSIDERATION AND FUTURE STUDIES
The neo-documentation movement is a rich source of research on the history and epistemology of Information Science in Brazil. By analyzing its evolution, it becomes possible to understand the development of conceptual studies, since the recovery of classical concepts takes us to the study of the origins of our research field. However, despite many works being produced under the neo-documentation perspective, there is still no defined corpus for the movement, we stillwalk through fragments when the intention is to characterize it.
These works, when gathered and analyzed, provide a bibliography that allows us to view neo-documentation as a consolidated movement, however little diffused. It is possible to recognize when an article possesses a neo-documentalist approach, even when not presenting the terms neo-documentation or neodocumentalist indexed to it. We can also identify these works based on the author's line of research, which enables the recognition of actors who built Information Science. These factors reinforce the need for more research on the subject and facilitate its dissemination.
We recommend that future investigations carry out a deeper exploration of the neo-documentation movement in Information Science both in Brazil and in other countries, for the construction of a conceptual framework able to create bridges between researchers with similar interests.