What is literature?

Literature is interpreted as "all tangible carriers with information and knowledge" in modern times. Specifically, a file is a combination of words, symbols, images, audio, etc. that record knowledge and information on a certain material carrier.

The word was first found in the Analects of Confucius and Eight Shu: "Confucius said, Li Xia, I can say it, but I can't prove it." Li Yin, what I can say is not enough in the Song Dynasty. Lack of literature. That's enough, then we can collect it. "Literature refers to classics, and dedication refers to talent. Zhu's Annotation to the Analects of Confucius explained: "Literati are classics. Dedicated, virtuous. " After that, the word evolved into a biased word, mainly "Wen", referring only to ancient books.

From an academic point of view, literature is a kind of written or other carrier material that records the activities of groups or individuals in politics, economy, military affairs, culture, science and religion in official or folk collections. Classic works are considered as the earliest archives in the world. The archives of Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty are the oldest historical archives that can be seen in China at present.

Literature has three basic attributes, namely:

intellectual

Recordability

materiality

It has the functions of storing knowledge, transmitting and exchanging information.

According to the difference of knowledge, quality and quantity of information and processing level, documents are divided into four grades, which are called:

Zero Doc: unprocessed original Doc.

Documents: papers, reports, etc.

Secondary literature: such as various abstracts.

Three documents: various comprehensive articles

From zero document, first-class document, second-class document to third-class document, it is a different level processing process of knowledge information from dispersion to concentration, from disorder to order, from erudition to refinement. The quality and quantity of information they contain are different, and they play different roles in improving people's knowledge structure. The zero-level and first-level documents are the most basic information sources and the main objects of document information retrieval and utilization; Secondary literature is a centralized refining and sorting of literature and a tool for literature information retrieval; The three documents are the results of comprehensive analysis and processing of scattered zero documents, first-level documents and second-level documents according to the categories of topics or knowledge. They are highly concentrated literature information, which is not only the object of literature information retrieval and utilization, but also the tool of literature information retrieval.