2017 Annual Meeting^

The submission deadline for proposals has been extended to July 15, 2017.

DOCAM17 is the fourteenth meeting of the Document Academy. It will be held at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, on September 29–30, 2017. The Document Academy is an international network of scholars, artists and professionals in various fields who are interested in the exploration of the concept of the document as a resource for scholarly, artistic, and professional work.

The aim of The Document Academy is to foster a multi-disciplinary space for exploratory and critical research on the document in the widest sense, drawing on scholarship, traditions and experiences from the arts and humanities, social sciences, education, and from such diverse fields as information, media, museum, archival, cultural, and science studies. The Document Academy originated as a co-sponsored effort by the Program of Documentation Studies, University of Tromsø, Norway, and the School of Information, University of California, Berkeley. The first DOCAM conference took place in Berkeley in 2003 and since then has toured around to Madison, Wisconsin; Denton, Texas; Växjö, Sweden; London, Ontario; Tromsø, Norway; Kent, Ohio; Sydney, Australia; and now Indiana University.

The 2017 conference is hosted by the Department of Information and Library Science in the School of Informatics and Computing at the University of Indiana, in Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A. The conference co-chairs are Carol Choksy and Ron Day.

Keynote Speaker^

We are delighted to announce that Maurizio Ferraris, of the University of Turin, and author of Documentality or Why it is Necessary to Leave Traces (Fordham UP, 2012)​, will be our keynote speaker for DOCAM17.

Call for Papers^

The submission deadline for proposals has been extended to July 15, 2017.

The theme of this year's annual meeting is: Documentation: Informatics, Information Science, Library Science, and Museum Studies​

I was sitting in the back of the large meeting room at a conference of government archivists and records managers about 20 years ago when Charles Dollar announced that “metadata” was anything required to read a document. I took off my glasses, making the large Powerpoint slide at the front of the room unreadable, looked at my glasses and decided he was wrong, my glasses are not metadata. I understood what he meant, that reading an electronic document required hardware, software, and applications, but his overly broad statement raised questions about what constitutes a document, what constitutes our ability to read it, and just as important what is required for us to create, collect, store, preserve, use, re-use, manage, and validate documents to create knowledge, pass on culture, and perform social acts. What do we have when we lack any of these?

The Document Academy (DOCAM) was created to open up, bring back, and question Documentation Studies. What does DOCAM contribute to a world that values "Big Data" and "Analytics" other than a quaint fondness for books, musty letters, and antelopes? Are there clear lines between Documentation Studies and Information Science, Informatics, and Computer Science? Do we contribute to a greater understanding of the Internet of Things, the sensors, and the platforms that constitute them? A computer program is a document, but when it runs, is that also a document?

DOCAM is comfortable with the fact that Documentation Studies isn't a "discipline" in the traditional sense. Our departments are increasingly associated with subject matter "information," and yet our intra-school colleagues often do not value our work. How do we communicate the value of our perspective and help them to understand that the document perspective has something to offer to their greater understanding of their work and enterprise?

Papers, posters, demonstrations may address:

Celebrating the discussions and work within DOCAM, we are especially asking for proposals within the following 4 themes:

Submission Details^

All proposals, including posters, must include:

Paper proposals should also include:

Proposals should be submitted electronically to cchoksy@indiana.edu. Acceptable file formats for proposals and papers are RTF, MS Word, or PDF.

All paper sessions will be plenary and given 30 minutes, which includes discussion.

Posters will be on display in the conference venue throughout the conference; open discussion is encouraged. Poster size: 20x30in or 30x40in.

Conference language is English.

Submission deadline for proposals: July 15, 2017 (extended from the original May 1 deadline). Receipt will be confirmed within one week. Decisions will be announced by as soon as possible following the deadline.

Visiting Bloomington^

You can fly into Indianapolis International Airport (IND) from nearly every major U.S. airport and then catch a van to Bloomington or rent a car. We will try to have some transportation available from the airport to Bloomington, so stay tuned. The drive is gorgeous!

Hotel rooms have been reserved at the Indiana Memorial Union's Biddle Hotel in the middle of campus where great restaurants to fit any taste are just a few steps away. The main venue will be at the Department of Information and Library Science at the Wells Library, in walking distance from the conference hotel.

Please note that Indiana University in Bloomington is home to many world-class institutions, such as the Lilly Library, the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, and the Archives of Traditional Music.

We will certainly offer tours of these places as part of the conference, and we may even be able to schedule presentations in these venues. Details to come.

Published Proceedings^

Should you wish to participate, we will be publishing the presentations in the Proceedings from the Document Academy, which publishes 1-2 issues a year as a record of the activities of the Document Academy, including Board-reviewed conference proceedings and peer-reviewed special issues.

Details on the submission of full manuscripts are to come. The deadline for submission will likely be mid-October, but participants will be welcome to submit their contribution ahead of the conference if desired.

Note that the Proceedings from the Document Academy is also welcoming submissions for a special issue in the first half of 2017. You are welcome to submit to both the special issue and the annual meeting. These are separate submission processes.