Antelopes as Documents

Judith Weedman (2008) wrote:
Suzanne Briet, an influential French information scientist in the 1930s-1950s, defined a document as "evidence in support of a fact." She argued that an antelope in a zoo, in contrast to one in the wild, has been placed in a socially constructed knowledge-promoting institution, can be employed as evidence supporting various facts, and is therefore a document. I use "information bearing entities" and "documents" in this way, to refer to any entity that can be used to provide information, although I wouldn't necessarily include antelopes. (p.114)

Weedman, Judith. 2008. Information retrieval: designing, querying, and evaluating information systems. The Portable MLIS: Insights from the Experts. Pp 112-126.