In this lecture we look at the broad definition of a documentary and how it has evolved over the last century. The word documentary comes from the word document which can be considered a theoretical construct. "An antelope running wild on the plains of Africa should not be considered a document, she rules. But if it were to be captured, taken to a zoo and made an object of study, it has been made into a document. It has become physical evidence being used by those who study it. Indeed, scholarly articles written about the antelope are secondary documents, since the antelope itself is the primary document." (Buckland 1998).
