THE ORIGINAL KERNEL OF DOCUMENTATION IN ACHANGING TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT

Technical developments in the professional work of the documentalists as well as tendencies expanding the discipline of documentation are de scribed and evaluated. The paper argues that documentalists should giv e more attention to the original kernel of the domain in order to posi tion documentation as a stabile and unique domain. The kernel consists of the four entities: knowledge, texts, denominations, concepts inclu ding the relations between these entities. The specific competence of the documentalist is focused on formal and thematic units of the commu nicated contents. The specific work to be done in documentation is ind exing, ordering and deciding about relevance. It is shown that the com plex kernel has a professional and technical potential and that the me thods of the domain must be further developed.