About the Document Academy

The Document Academy (DOCAM) is a global collective that celebrates documentation and documents of all kinds. Through research, art and other discourse venues, the Document Academy explores issues and applications in documentation and documents across academia, the arts, business and society at large.

The neo-documentalist tradition was borne from the collegial relationship of Niels Windfeld Lund, Michael Buckland and W. Boyd Rayward, which stemmed from their meeting at CoLIS2 in 1996.

The Document Academy itself was founded and named in a San Francisco cafe by Maribeth Back and Niels Windfeld Lund in spring 2001. From the outset, they envisaged workshops, conferences, research centers and experimentation. To this day, the Document Academy is not a rigid organization—there is no constitution, staff or bylaws. Instead, the Document Academy community comes together in an annual meeting.

Between meetings, the Document Academy convenes virtually on its Facebook page, on the DOCAM listserv and in its open-access proceedings.

To learn more about the history and development of the Document Academy, view the video below.