The centenary of “Madame Documentation”: Suzanne Briet, 1894–1989

Buckland, M. The centenary of ‘Madame Documentation’: Suzanne Briet, 1894-1989. (1995) Text (without photos) of article published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science 46, no. 3 (April 1995):235-237. Published version may differ slightly. French version: Le centenaire de Madame Documentation : Suzanne Briet, 1894-1989. Documentaliste: Sciences de l'information 32, no. 3 (Mai/Juin 1995): 179-181. The Centenary of Madame Documentation : Suzanne Briet, 1894-1989. Michael Buckland, School of Library and Information Studies, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-4600 Abstract: This is a biographical account of Suzanne Briet, 1884-1989, librarian, documentalist, historian, organizer, and feminist. One of the first few women appointed as librarian at the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Briet was a leader in the development of Documentation in the 1930s and until she retired in 1954. Her manifesto on the nature of Documentation, Qu'est-ce que la documentation? (Paris, 1951), remains significant for information science theory. This year was the centenary of the birth, on February 1, 1894 in France, of Renee-Marie- Helene-Suzanne Briet, a significant pioneer of information science in the days when it was called documentation. She was known for a while under her married name, as Suzanne Dupuy (or Dupuy-Briet). Briet qualified as a secondary school teacher of English and History, but after teaching in Annaba, Algeria, from 1917 to 1920, she became a librarian. Qualifying in 1924, she was one of the first three women appointed as professional librarians in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. The feminization of librarianship occurred later in France than in the USA, essentially between the two World Wars. In addition, many new ideas were being introduced at that time, some influenced by North American practice and encouraged by the Paris Library School that operated, under American Library Association sponsorship, from 1923 to 1929. It must have been an exciting and interesting situation in spite of the political and economic difficulties and, later, the Second World War. (See Maack 1983, Delmas 1992; Documentaliste 1993, Richards Briet's main professional achievement at the Bibliotheque Nationale was symbolic of her interest in service and modernization: She planned, established, and supervised from 1934 to 1954 the Salle des Catalogues et Bibliographies, which was created by remodeling a basement (Cain 1936, photos on pp.33-34). Bibliographies which had previously been kept in closed stacks, she made available. She organized supplementary indexing and developed a bibliographic advisory service. The cross of the Legion of Honor was conferred on her in this room in 1950. From the late 1920s onwards Briet was active nationally and internationally in the development of what was then called Documentation but would now be called Information Science. She participated in the founding, in 1931, and in the subsequent leadership of the Union Francaise des Organismes de Documentation (UFOD), the French analogue of the American Documentation Institute (founded in 1937 and now called the American Society for Information Science). She was a leader in developing professional education for this new speciality. She developed (and UFOD adopted) a plan for what would have been the first school