Document
When it was felt that the name ‘book’ is not appropriate to address all the information storage devices which have undergone many new changes in their physical format and style due to the scientific and technological development, the glossaries of librarianship started adopting a new term ‘document’.
The term document refers to printed, handwritten and engraved materials both in book form such as books, periodical publications, and non book form like microfilms, photographs, gramophone records, tape records etc (Krishankumar 1978).
According to Joan M. Reitz a document is ‘a generic term for a physical entity consisting of any substance on which is recorded all or a portion of one or more works for the purpose of conveying or preserving knowledge (Reitz 2006).
Dr.S.R.Ranganathan has provided even a more elaborated and descriptive definition for the term document as ‘A record made on a more or less flat surface or on a surface admitting of being spread flat when required, made of paper or other material fit for easy handling, transport across space, and preservation through time of thought created by mind and expressed in language or symbols or in any other mode, and or a record of natural or social phenomena made directly by an instrument without being passed through the human mind and woven into thought created and expressed by it. ( Ranganathan 1961)
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