Document

A document is a material testimony of a fact or act carried out in functions by institutions or physical, legal, public or private persons, registered in an information unit on any type of support (paper, tapes, magnetic disks, photographs, etc.) in natural or conventional language. It is the testimony of a human activity fixed on a support, giving rise to an archival, archaeological, audiovisual source, among others.

Basic features

Traditionally, the medium of a document was paper and the information was entered by hand, using ink (this is called making a manuscript) or by a mechanical process (using a typewriter, or using a printer). laser).

From a computer science point of view, it is a file, but with certain attributes, since it contains textual or graphic data created by the user with his computer -or mobile device, for example- through a program. The file is given a name and a format to save it to a pre-assigned directory, subdirectory, or folder on the storage drive. It can be reopened when you need to access its content, either to print, modify or delete it. It is much more common to just say file.

Any material object that carries, registers or fixes, in itself, information, that is, the set formed by the container with its content; with the objective of preserving and transmitting said information in the domain of space and time in order to be used as a legal or probative instrument, historical testimony, etc.

Any source of information recorded on any support, be it a compact disc (CD), a digital versatile disc (DVD), paper, papyrus or even a stone or piece of wood. Documents can be classified according to:

• To material support used to record the information.
• To the informational characteristics it carries.

Characteristics of the material support

Regarding the nature of the documents, they can be textual and non-textual.

• Textuals: are the documents containing written information about a paper holder.
• Non-textual: are documents that although they may contain written information; however, most importantly, they are usually in other types of supports different from paper because they are made to see, hear, and manipulate.

Informational features

These are characteristics that have to do with the informative nature. The intellectual characteristics are the content, purpose, theme, etc. We can make the following classification: primary, secondary, and tertiary documents.

Primary documents are those that contain original information from the author and have not gone through any kind of treatment (books, doctoral theses, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, conference proceedings). Secondary documents are the result of applying treatment to primary documents (for example, bibliographies, indexes, catalogues, abstract journals). Tertiary documents are the result of applying treatment to secondary documents, although some authors define them as mechanical reproductions (photocopies).

Types of documents

Archive document

Archivistic document is all testimonial expression, in any language, form or support (written or written form, textual or graphic, handwritten or printed, in natural or encoded language, in any documentary support as well as in any other graphic expression, sound, in image or electronic), usually in single copy, (although it can be multicopyed or diffused in print).

Francisco Fuster