Appearance and consolidation of Documentation: subsidies for the understanding of the history of Information Science in Brazil

Abstract

The terms Librarianship (Biblioteconomia), Documentation, and Information Science are widely used in Brazil. However, the second is the less known. Thereby, the article presents a mapping of the appearance and consolidation of Documentation, aiming to provide subsidies for the understanding of the influence of this movement in Brazil. It presents a bibliographical revision starting from works which present the conception and the development of Documentation, and historical data of the field in Brazil. It concludes that the European influence in Brazil from the end of the XIX century to the 1930s was brief, although effective, whilst the influence of Documentation, which occurred between 1950 and 1960, was strongly related to the production that was taking place in the United States. The research evidences the strong inheritance of Documentation in France, Spain and Portugal, and the importance of this movement to the overcoming of the restrictive approaches attributed to Librarianship, and the continuous clashes over the object of Information Science.