QOTD: timbl is a document

Posted on January 24, 2008 by Richard Cyganiak

Simon Spero on the SKOS list:

The meaning of “documet” in this context is extremely broad; if we follow Otlet’s definition of a document as anything which can convey information to an observer, the term would seem to cover anything which can have a subject.

By this standard, timbl is a document, but only when someone’s looking.

Ah, the Semantic Web community! Please leave your common sense at the door …

This entry was posted in General. Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to QOTD: timbl is a document

  1. Simon Spero says:
    January 24, 2008 at 20:13

    Umm… this borad notion of what can be called a document is quite a bit older than the web; Paul Otlet is considered by many to be the founding father of hypertext.

    See: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/otlet.html for a lot of useful links (English and French)) ;

    See also: http://www.swbv.uni-konstanz.de/depot/media/3400000/3421000/3421308/97_0291.html#A (German).

  2. Giovanni Tummarello says:
    March 4, 2008 at 20:55

    Shouldn’t a document at least not have its own will? :-)
    Giovanni

  3. Pingback: Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics, Cambridge - Staudinger’s Semantic Molecules » Blog Archive » What is a document?

Comments are closed.