Re: [Glossary] Definition of a portable document (and other things...)

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 11:25 AM, Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com>
wrote:

> Your personal website COULD be a document and in fact you might want to
> “package it up” and archive it away as such.
>

Sure, it could be. But it isn't. The definition of a portable document must
not to be so general that  it includes every collection of resources that
could theoretically exist in the format we define as "portable."

That's why I used the term "editorial constructed." Ivan took exception to
the word "editor," although in this case I am distinguishing between the
concept of "editor" and the concept of "editorial." In fact, you make the
distinction for me yourself, right here, Leonard:

“unrelated” is only a current state in the mind of a single person.  The
> simple act of making a collection of them has now made them related.  And
> that act of collecting them together (by human or machine) is the
> “editorial construct”.
>

The simple act of making a collection of them has made them " editorially
constructed." However, when you say that active collecting them together --
by human or machine -- is the editorial construct. I would argue that
something does not become a portable document because a spider crawled the
site and generated a sitemap file. That can be *one* method by which
portable documents are created (e.g., I can make the decision that I would
like to create a document which is my entire site, so I build a spider to
generate a collection). However, the mere act of having a machine generated
collection doesn't make something a document.

For what it's worth, I think this is an inherent danger in creating
explicit definitions, although of course I see the value in doing so as
well.

The others here who have a library, archives, or information science
background might recognize what I'm saying here, but I assert that to make
something a document, a human choice needs to have been made to create it
(even if the human choice was "I am going to run a web crawler and
everything that it grabs will be a document"). Refencing Briet and those
who followed: "There is intentionality: It is intended that the object be
treated as evidence" and "the quality of having been placed in an
organized, meaningful relationship with other evidence--that gives an
object its documentary status." cf
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/digdoc.html

To quote Buckland's conclusion in the link above: "Attempts to define
digital documents are likely to remain elusive, if more than an ad hoc,
pragmatic definition is wanted.."

I know we are not going to pin down something which has eluded entire
fields of information science. However, if we must define "document", it's
vital to make it clear that a document is not a random collection of
electronic files that happen to be something accessed together. They are
constructed with intention, or compiled with intention.

For what it's worth, compiled with intention can be a readerly choice, as
well. Think about Pintrest as a (not at all portable) example. A collection
of images of sofa cushions, curtains, and paint swatches from a variety of
different company's websites and personal blogs does not itself construe a
document. However, if a Pintrest user then puts together a board compiling
all of those images, that  is a constructed document. The only implied
consumer of that document might also be the compiler of it, but that
doesn't make it any less a document. Nonetheless,  intellectual choices
were a necessary part of that compilation.

Deborah