Documentation: Complete Cycle of Information Service
Ralph R. Shaw · College & Research Libraries · 1957
Cycle of Information Service D OCUMENTATION IS BEST differentiatedfrom normal library service by the extent to which it is concerned with a complete-cycle system of providing information.This cycle involves the identification, recording, organization, storage, recall, conversion into more useful forms, synthesis, and dissemination of the intellectual content of print and other recorded materials.General library work tends to concentrate in the part of this cycle between recording and recall.Documentation completes the cycle by also dealing with identification, conversion, synthesis, and dissemination.Documentation is distinguished from general library work in two additional ways ..It is more intensive-i.e., subject analysis is carried further, the range of resources accumulated is greater, etc.And documentation has the quality of special, as distinct from general, library service in its relationship to the specialized needs of particular users and uses.Thus the differentiation of documentation from general library work and from systematic bibliography is primarily a matter of degree.These fields are so closely interrelated that one person may, almost simultaneously, be performing functions in all three.Library functions (such as acquisition, cataloging, and lending, which constitute part, but by