Suzanne Briet

Renée-Marie-Hélène-Suzanne Briet (/ˈbreɪ/; French pronunciation: ​[bʁie]; 1 February 1894 in Paris, France - 1989 in Boulogne, France), known as "Madame Documentation," was a librarian, author, historian, poet, and visionary best known for her treatise Qu'est-ce que la documentation? (What is Documentation?), a foundational text in the modern study of information science. She is also known for her writings on the history of Ardennes and the poet Arthur Rimbaud.

Her treatise Qu'est-ce que la documentation? offers a vision of documentation that moves beyond Paul Otlet's emphasis on fixed forms of documents, such as the book, toward "an unlimited horizon of physical forms and aesthetic formats for documents and an unlimited horizon of techniques and technologies (and of 'documentary agencies' employing these) in the service of multitudes of particular cultures." Like many early European Documentalists, Briet embraced modernity and science. However, her work made a difference to modernism and science through the influence of French post-structuralist theorists and her strong orientation toward humanistic scholarship. She subsequently ushered in a second generation of European Documentation and introduced humanistic methods and concerns, especially semiotics and cultural studies, to information science.