Towards an Architectural Document Analysis

Abstract

The text that follows is a slightly revised extract from my doctoral thesis (Francke 2008) [1]. It draws on the notions of information architecture and document architecture to identify a set of concepts for analysing documents as sociotechnical artefacts. The analytical tool was developed for the purpose of analysing scholarly journals, which has tinged it to some extent, but it is likely applicable also for analysis of other document types and genres. As part of identifying concepts, I refer to several of the more established ways of conceptualising information architecture and document architecture. As such, the text may provide an introduction to these two areas, as they looked a few years ago when the thesis was prepared. The article may thus be of interest both as a first introduction to the two perspectives and from a theoretical and methodological point of view