Information systems, at any level of complexity above that of speech, necessarily involve technologies such as printing, telecommunications, or compu… - Brian Campbell Vickery

The crux of the retrieval problem is that selecting documents to read grows ever more difficult, and new techniques are continually needed.

[Information] science and technology are now so closely linked that analysis and experiment lead quickly on to invention, to the introduction of new channels (and documents).

In the past, documentation has frequently been compared with librarianship, with some argument as to which comprehends the other. The field is more helpfully characterised if we take its scope to be all forms of document (i.e. any physical carrier of symbolic messages) and all aspects of their handling, from production to delivery. The document system then becomes very much wider than conventional librarianship – it includes publication and printing, distribution, some forms of telecommunication, analysis, storage, retrieval and delivery to the user.