Quotes About Documentation

I just love the days when you come out of the archives with half a dozen excellent descriptions or poignant accounts of personal experiences.

History has to be observed. Otherwise it's not history. It's just … well, things happening one after another.

Omens were all very well, but sometimes it would help if people just wrote things down.

I do not judge, I only chronicle.

The guy who knows about computers is the last person you want to have creating documentation for people who don't understand computers.

A historian is often only a journalist facing backwards.

Assign someone who isn't actively participating in the discussion to be the scribe, responsible for taking accurate notes. Session notes should contain an attendee list, invitees who did not attend, decisions made, actions to be taken and who is responsible for each, outstanding issues, and the high points of key discussions.

In the words of the systems thinker John Sterman, 'The most important assumptions of a model are not in the equations, but what's not in them; not in the documentation, but unstated; not in the variables on the computer screen, but in the blank spaces around them'.

To lose a passport was the least of one's worries. To lose a notebook was a catastrophe

documents—a luxury that earlier lexicographers never enjoyed.

THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS

The purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time...

But what is in many ways most memorable about Robert Canterbury's report are the final two items on his list: "Problem Areas and Lessons Learned" and "Recommendations." Beside both, the highest-ranking National Guard officer at Kent State University on May 4 typed: "None." Of all the thousands of pages of documentation spawned by the shootings, there may be no sadder testament than those two "nones.

I went to regular schools and I was home schooled a lot but I don't have any history in schools. Like, I literally don't exist. I didn't even get a birth certificate until the mid-80s. I always feel like I could be, like, 10 years younger, or maybe I'm 70!

It's a different world now. You look out there and you can see so many people filming with their cameras nowadays. I can go on YouTube and see last night's show if I want to. It's out there.

Documenting trips makes them that much richer. I stick in train tickets and business cards from restaurants. It makes the whole experience poetic, describing the sights, smells and sounds around me. It means I can relive the holiday years later.

The rest of my work, besides sketching and keeping a diary, which was the most troublesome of all, consisted in making geological and zoological collections.

Proud parents document the arrival and growth of their future CIA officer in all forms of social media that the world can access for decades to come.

I have never met a document I don't like.

The documentation of the Blitz is particularly valuable in that it shows that Christian nationalists have self-consciously embraced a strategy of advancing their goals through deception and indirection.

History is not what happened but what is written down

History is not what happened. History is what was written down.

Instagram something with the intention of it being taken down by Instagram. Take a screenshot of it; keep a record of it. Instagram the screenshot. Screenshot that Instagram. If it is taken down again, repeat the process until all you're posting is a screenshot of a screenshot of a screenshot . . . of the original photo.

I'm pretty sure that when babies are born in Oregon, they leave the hospital with birth certificates - and teeny-tiny sleeping bags.