This paper presents the concepts that are important for the understanding, under the light of Information Science, of the specificities and potentiality of the electronic document in the hypertextual environment of the WWW. To achieve this, terms such as document, documentation chain and information unit are brought together to concepts that characterize the digital environment such as hypertextuality and information architecture. The ideas presented here are part of the studies developed for the dissertation "Strategies for the creation and organization of information in the WWW: an analysis of touristic sites", presented in April of 2005 at the Graduate Program in Information Science of the School of Information Science of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, main objective was to present a methodology for analysis of sites (not included in this paper) that takes into account the identification and understanding of the processes of creation and organization of information.
Internet; Eletronic document; Information organization; Information architecture; Assessment of sites