18 Facts About Suzanne Briet

Suzanne Briet is known for her writings on the history of Ardennes and the poet Arthur Rimbaud.

Suzanne Briet subsequently ushered in a second generation of European Documentation and introduced humanistic methods and concerns, especially semiotics and cultural studies, to information science.

Suzanne Briet was born in Paris, France, on 1 February 1894, coming of age at a time of great social change and economic loss in France after World War I Although Briet grew up in Paris, she remained attached to her birthplace and ancestral home.

Historians have suggested that perhaps because of her experiences during the war, as well as her travels to England as a child, Suzanne Briet took an early interest in the League of Nations, sitting in on some of the sessions held in Paris, and the founding of other international organizations.

Suzanne Briet's family sent her to Ecole de Sevres, an elite women's school for training secondary school teachers, where she earned a degree in history and qualified to teach English and history.

Suzanne Briet played a central role in the "modern library" movement, which eschewed elitist traditions that had dominated many libraries in favor of "modern" ideas of librarianship.

Between 1934 and 1954, Suzanne Briet created and supervised the Salle des Catalogues et Bibliographies, making available materials throughout France that had been previously restricted to most patrons.

In 1951 Suzanne Briet helped establish the Institut National de Techniques de la Documentation at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers.

Suzanne Briet was the founding Director of Studies and eventually the Vice-President of the International Federation for Documentation.

Suzanne Briet retired from the Bibliotheque Nationale in 1954 at age 60.

Suzanne Briet wrote her last essays on documentation in 1955.

Suzanne Briet spent her retirement concentrating on other interests, including the history of Ardennes and the poet Arthur Rimbaud.

Suzanne Briet published roughly 100 essays, books, and reports on documentation, library science, and history.

Suzanne Briet took up many of the pressing issues of documentation in her day: internationalization, institutionalization, information or documentary overload, scholarly communication, science and technology studies, world peace, and international development.

Suzanne Briet had been deeply engaged in the documentation movement from the 1920s onward, bringing to it a deep understanding of culture and the humanities.

Suzanne Briet saw society and, therefore, culture, as being re-shaped by technology.

Suzanne Briet solves this problem with her argument that a document must be defined by its intentional use as such.

Suzanne Briet saw knowledge as embedded and emergent in cultural and social production and saw modernity as the growth of networks of knowledge.