Parts Level:  Document

Definition:  Identifies reports of legal activity.

Comment:  Covers what are traditionally called documents, usually single sheets, although occasionally in book format. It will depend upon the inputter to distinguish, according to formality of presentation of the manuscript itself, between "codex" (the implied "normal" to this database) and "document" (the less frequent item in this database) in the gray area of book-like documents (cartularies; dogali; registers; note that collections of laws, such as English statute books, are not documents). The reason for this field is to allow users to restrict their search to documents or to exclude documents from their search, in recognition of the nature of medieval studies whereby scholars tend to work in one field or the other. The reason for the placement of the "Document" field in the Part level is that documents may often survive as endleaves in a codex, and will thus constitute a separate Part of a given codex. For a list of the fields normally applicable to documents, see Appendix 5.

Example:

Properties:  Yes/no box answering the question, "Is this a document?"; default value set for "no."

Required?:  Yes.