Essay (& Bibliographic essay)
The essay is a form of writing (non-fiction) which was introduced by Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) in 1580.
"Essay, a short work that treats of a topic from an author's personal point of view, often taking into account subjective experiences and personal reflections upon them." (Wikipedia, 2005).
The genre is known in Information Science by, for example, the many essay published by Eugene Garfield (1977-1991).
Bibliographic essays constitute a subcategory of this genre:
"A bibliographic essay is a narrative discussion, a review, of the literature of a topic. It is the equivalent of a conversation in which someone not only advises you about "what's out there" but shapes that raw material into a coherent survey of the materials available. Like all bibliographies, the bibliographic essay enumerates sources and, like an annotated bibliography, it describes and analyses them; it goes beyond performing these functions, however, to comparing, contrasting, and evaluating the relationships among works. A bibliographic essay thus draws a picture of the literature of a topic, and in so doing, unlike a list and like an essay, it tends to take a position and establish an interpretive point of view." [Kieft, 2000]
An example of a bibliographic essay is Schwarz (1997).
Literature:
Abram, K.(2002). Electronic textuality - a bibliographic essay. http://www.mantex.co.uk/ou/resource/elec_txt.htm
Garfield, E. (1977-1991). Essays of an Information Scientist, 14 vols. Full-text access: http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays.html
Kieft, R. (2000). The Bibliographic essay. http://www.haverford.edu/library/reference/rkieft/bibess.html
Montagne, M. (1580). Essais. Bordeaux: S. Millanges.
O'Neill, J. (1982). Essaying Montaigne: A Study of the Renaissance Institution of Writing and Reading. London: Routledge.
Schlaffer, H. (1997). Essay. IN: Weimar, K. (Ed.). Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Band 1. 3. neubearb. Aufl. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. (Pp. 522-525).
Schwarz, P. J. (1997). The Roots of American Slavery: A bibliographical Essay http://www.stratfordhall.org/schwarz.html
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2005). Essay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essay
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 27-05-2006