The term document has multiple meanings in ordinary language and in scholarship. WordNet 3.1. lists four meanings (October 2011):
- document, written document, papers (writing that provides information (especially information of an official nature))
- document (anything serving as a representation of a person's thinking by means of symbolic marks)
- document (a written account of ownership or obligation)
- text file, document ((computer science) a computer file that contains text (and possibly formatting instructions) using seven-bit ASCII characters).
In Library and information science and in documentation science, a "document" is considered a basic theoretical construct. It is everything which may be preserved or represented in order to serve as evidence for some purpose. The classical example provided by Suzanne Briet is an antelope: "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." (Quoted from Buckland, 1998 ). (This view has been seen as an early expression of what now is known as actor–network theory).
That documents cannot be defined by their transmission medium (such as paper) is evident because of the existence of electronic documents.
Read more about Document: What Is A Document?, Types of Documents, Developing Documents, History, In Law
Other articles related to "document, documents":
... with similar features implemented as a "preview" mode, in FullWrite the document remained fully editable in this view ... FullWrite also featured change bars, allowing users to track changes to the documents ... FullWrite's solution supported not only one document outline, but any number of them, allowing the document to be arranged in several different ways ...
... The Estimate of the Situation was a document supposedly written in 1948 by the personnel of United States Air Force's Project Sign -including the project’s director, Captain ... As late as 1960, USAF personnel claimed that the document never existed ... Force officers, and one consultant, describe the report as being a real document that was suppressed ...
... Documents in all forms are frequently found to be material evidence in criminal and civil proceedings ... The forensic analysis of such a document falls under the scope of questioned document examination ... For the purpose of cataloging and managing the large number of documents that may be produced in the course of a law suit, Bates numbering is often ...
... Historian Paul Groussac and later Ricardo Levene accused the document of being a forgery, written by an enemy of the revolution in order to discredit it ... Supporters of the document accepted it, stating that the document found was not the original but a copy, and that it was not something unexpected that the copy was ... The original document, handwritten by Mariano Moreno, has not been discovered yet ...
... can be used when writing a first draft of some document types ... The abstract describes the subject, so that the reader knows what the document covers ... The body is the majority of the document and covers topics in depth ...
Famous quotes containing the word document:
“... research is never completed ... Around the corner lurks another possibility of interview, another book to read, a courthouse to explore, a document to verify.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it, dull to the contempory who reads it, invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it!”
—Ellen Terry (1848–1928)