Models and forms of bibliographical thinking: in search of a point of view to interpret complexity

Abstract

The paradigmatic transformations, rapid and in continuous acceleration, of the organization and communication of knowledge in contemporary reality make it necessary to reflect on the principles on which models and methods of the bibliographic tradition are based. This paper examines these topics: a) the elementary entities that constitute the “objects” of the representation of knowledge, from “books” to “data”; b) the description of some of the essential characteristics of the models of representation of these “objects”; c) the ways in which the perception of representations is carried out and communicated, through the recordings, giving rise to the different interfaces of bibliographic mediation, in the classic frame of the Bibliographic universe; d) the relational and holistic nature that characterizes the empirical phenomena referred to knowledge of objects, bibliographic and extra-bibliographic; e) the model profile of a possible Bibliographic multiverse; e) the general lines of a “point of view” with which to hypothesize the integration, following Michel Foucault, of “words” and “things”.

Keywords

• theory of bibliography
• bibliographic universe
• bibliographic multiverse
• complexity
• datafication