[1] 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.

[7] Although Briet had been highly regarded throughout much of her career—the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur was conferred on her in 1950—she was largely forgotten in her later life, until her death in 1989, when scholars like Mary Niles Maack found a renewed interest in her ideas.

Today scholars often credit Briet as a visionary, having laid the foundation for contemporary frameworks and methodologies in information science roughly 50 years earlier.

"Her modernist perspective," writes Michael Buckland, "combined with semiotics, deserves attention now because it is different from, and offers an alternative to, the scientific, positivist view that has so dominated information science and which is increasingly questioned.

Historians have suggested that perhaps because of her experiences during the war, as well as her travels to England as a child, 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.

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

During World War II, Briet witnessed many of her colleagues deported during the German occupation of Paris and others arrested as communists.

Despite "a climate of fear, censorship, oppression and physical hardship," Briet made sure to carry out the catalog and bibliographic services of the Bibliothèque Nationale.

During the war, Briet continued her interest in documentation, even attending a conference in Salzburg, Germany, which was organized by German Documentalists.

)"[8] Her thirty-year career at the Bibliothèque Nationale often put Briet in close contact with major French thinkers of the day, including scientists, historians, linguists, and philosophers, which had a significant impact on her philosophy.

[11] She 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.

The techniques of documentation in aiding and shaping intellectual work were, in her view, both a symptom of, and contributing force within the 'industrialization' of knowledge workers.

Ronald Day explains the idea this way: "Information and communication technologies may introduce a 'new rhythm' to society and culture, but they themselves are a 'symptom' of Western social development.