Familiar categories and documentary forms: Readers’ perspectives.
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Open Access Location
Authors
Cossham, A.F.
Keywords
Documents
Bibliographic universe
Information landscape
Library catalogues
Bibliographic universe
Information landscape
Library catalogues
Description of form
Publisher
Rights
Rights holder
Issue Date
2015
Peer-reviewed status
Type
Conference paper
Abstract
This paper presents an evaluation of the ways in which three different groups of readers (recordkeepers, teachers and secondary school students) categorise documents. This is used to show how they understand documents, documentary forms and genre. Drawing on a card sorting activity conducted around a set of cards of documents related to The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, the paper discusses the significance of familiar categories as cultural markers (closely linked to particular rhetorical genres). It considers the impact of domain knowledge on the process of sorting and naming of categories, and compares the approaches taken by participants with those of library catalogues. It finds that there is no single, consistent approach to categorising the cards, with different literary genres, rhetorical genres, reasons for using, format, accessibility, and form all affecting the final categories each participant developed.
Citation
Cossham, A. (2015). Familiar categories and documentary forms: Readers’ perspectives. In Proceedings from the 12th Annual Meeting of the Document Academy, 2, paper 12. Retrieved from http://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/docam/vol2/iss1/.