A Document (Re)turn: Contributions from a Research Field in Transition

When people are checking in to flights, making reports to their company manager, composing music, delivering papers for exams in schools, or examining patients in hospitals, they all deal with documents and processes of documentation. In earlier times, documentation took place primarily in libraries and archives. While the latter are still important document institutions, documents today play a far more essential role in social life in many different domains and cultures. In this book, which celebrates the ten year anniversary of documentation studies in Tromsø, experts from many different disciplines, professional domains as well as cultures around the world present their way of dealing with documents, demonstrating many potential directions for the emerging broad field of documentation studies.

The Editors: Roswitha Skare, born in 1967, has a cand.philol. degree from the University of Tromsø, Norway. Between 1995 and 2000 she was a research fellow in German literature. Since 2000 she holds the post of associate professor in Documentation Studies, where she teaches courses in document theory and document history.
Niels Windfeld Lund, born in 1949, has an M.A. in History and Ethnology from the University of Aarhus, Denmark. He became the first full professor in Documentation Studies at the Department of Documentation Studies, University of Tromsø, Norway, in 1996. Currently his main research fields are document theory, experimental document analysis, notably in the domains of telemedicine and the Arts, especially the Opera considered as a multimedia document.
Andreas Vårheim, born in 1958, has been an associate professor in the Documentation Studies program at the University of Tromsø, Norway, since 1999. He received his doctorate in political science from the University of Tromsø. Currently the focus of his research is on institutional development and policy development, especially on questions regarding public library policy and social trust.