1. The Original Document

Different preservation or media conversion technologies are appropriate to different kinds of original material. This section, therefore, is devoted to a classification of terms used in describing the original document to be preserved, particularly those terms that need to be referenced in the context of media conversion.

The term document is used generically throughout this Glossary to include all forms of books, manuscripts, records and other classes of material containing information or other matter of intellectual content, regardless of the actual medium (1.1) or format (1.2) employed.

The Glossary takes free license with terms that have taken on a traditional meaning in the context of cataloging and other library activities, and in fact frequently departs from traditional norms used in this area. As stated in the Introduction, the reason for this is that such traditional definitions often confuse the format and content of the document with the medium used to record it, terms that have traditionally been used somewhat interchangeably and indiscriminately. This made sense when paper was the primary medium used for document capture, storage, distribution, and use. With newer technologies, however, and particularly with those used for media conversion (3.1), different media can be used for each of these stages, and, in fact, different media can be used for different instances of each stage. In this context, therefore, it makes taxonomic sense to separate format from medium.

For example, a traditional classification is "Motion pictures and video recordings." In our Glossary, the document format would be "motion pictures." The medium could be "film" or "videotape" or even "digital electronic" (such as with digital video). Even a book (document format) could be embodied in different media: "paper," "audio" (the "talking book"), "microform," or "digital electronic." To extend the example, the book could be stored in a digital electronic medium, and subsequently distributed electronically, and used by "printing-on- demand" on paper or microform, or by presentation at a digital computer workstation.

[Document Tree]