Document
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A document is a
Abstract definitions
The concept of "document" has been defined by Suzanne Briet as "any concrete or symbolic indication, preserved or recorded, for reconstructing or for proving a phenomenon, whether physical or mental."[1]
An often-cited article concludes that "the evolving notion of document" among Jonathan Priest, Paul Otlet, Briet, Walter Schürmeyer, and the other documentalists increasingly emphasized whatever functioned as a document rather than traditional physical forms of documents. The shift to digital technology would seem to make this distinction even more important. David M. Levy has said that an emphasis on the technology of digital documents has impeded our understanding of digital documents as documents.[2] A conventional document, such as a mail message or a technical report, exists physically in digital technology as a string of bits, as does everything else in a digital environment. As an object of study, it has been made into a document. It has become physical evidence by those who study it.
"Document" is defined in library and information science and documentation science as a fundamental, abstract idea: the word denotes everything that may be represented or memorialized to serve as evidence. The classic example provided by 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."[3][4] This opinion has been interpreted[by whom?] as an early expression of actor–network theory.
Kinds
A document can be structured, like tabular documents,
Documents are used in numerous fields, e.g.:
- Academia:
- manuscript,
- thesis,
- paper,
- journal,
- chart,
- and technical drawing
- Media:
- mock-up,
- script,
- image,
- photography,
- and newspaper article
- Administration, law, and politics:
- Business:
- invoice,
- request for proposal,
- proposal,
- contract,
- packing slip,
- manifest,
- report (detailed and summary),
- spreadsheet,
- material safety data sheet,
- waybill,
- bill of lading,
- financial statement,
- nondisclosure agreement(NDA),
- mutual nondisclosure agreement,
- and user guide
- Geography and planning:
- topographic map,
- cadastre,
- legend,
- and architectural plan
Such standard documents can be drafted based on a template.
Drafting
The page layout of a document is how information is graphically arranged in the space of the document, e.g., on a page. If the appearance of the document is of concern, the page layout is generally the responsibility of a graphic designer. Typography concerns the design of letter and symbol forms and their physical arrangement in the document (see typesetting). Information design concerns the effective communication of information, especially in industrial documents and public signs. Simple textual documents may not require visual design and may be drafted only by an author, clerk, or transcriber. Forms may require a visual design for their initial fields, but not to complete the forms.
Media
Traditionally, the medium of a document was
Historically, documents were inscribed with ink on
(book).Contemporary electronic means of memorializing and displaying documents include:
- printer to produce a hard copy;
- Personal digital assistant;
- Dedicated e-book device;
- Portable Document Format(PDF);
- Information appliance;
- Digital audio player; and
- service provider.
Digital documents usually require a specific file format to be presentable in a specific medium.
In law
Documents in all forms frequently serve as material
See also
- Archive
- Book
- Documentality
- Documentation
- History of the book
- Identity document
- Letterhead
- Realia (library science)
- Travel document
References
- ^ Briet, S. (1951). "Qu'est-ce que la documentation?". Éditions Documentaires Industrielles et Techniques. Quoted in Buckland, Michael (1991). "Information as Thing". people.ischool.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2023-10-18.
- ^ Levy, David M., Fixed or Fluid? Document Stability and New Media., archived from the original on 2013-06-06, retrieved 2023-10-18
- ^ Buckland, M. "What Is a Digital Document?" 1998. In Document Numérique Paris. 2(2). [1] Archived 2011-10-02 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Buckland, Michael (2018). "Document theory" (PDF). Knowledge Organization. 45 (5): 425–436. Archived from the original on 2022-05-06. Retrieved 2023-10-18.
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Further reading
- Briet, S. (1951). Qu'est-ce que la documentation? Paris: Documentaires Industrielles et Techniques.
- Buckland, M. (1991). Information and information systems. New York: Greenwood Press.
- Frohmann, Bernd (2009). Revisiting "what is a document?", Journal of Documentation, 65(2), 291–303.
- Hjerppe, R. (1994). A framework for the description of generalized documents. Advances in Knowledge Organization, 4, 173–180.
- Houser, L. (1986). Documents: The domain of library and information science. Library and Information Science Research, 8, 163–188.
- Larsen, P.S. (1999). Books and bytes: Preserving documents for posterity. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(11), 1020–1027.
- Lund, N. W. (2008). Document theory. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 43, 399–432.
- Riles, A. (Ed.) (2006). Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI.
- Schamber, L. (1996). What is a document? Rethinking the concept in uneasy times. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 47, 669–671.
- Signer, Beat: What is Wrong with Digital Documents? A Conceptual Model for Structural Cross-Media Content Composition and Reuse, In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2010), Vancouver, Canada, November 2010.
- Smith, Barry. "How to Do Things with Documents", Rivista di Estetica, 50 (2012), 179–198.
- Smith, Barry. "Document Acts", in Anita Konzelmann-Ziv, Hans Bernhard Schmid (eds.), 2013. Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents.Contributions to Social Ontology (Philosophical Studies Series), Dordrecht: Springer
- Ørom, A. (2007). The concept of information versus the concept of a document. I: Document (re)turn. Contributions from a research field in transition. Ed. By Roswitha Skare, Niels Windfeld Lund & Andreas Vårheim. Frankfurt is Main: Peter Lang. (pp. 53–72).