documentation

Documentation is a set of documents provided on paper, or online, or on digital or analog media, such as audio tape or CDs. Example are user guides, white papers, on-line help, quick-reference guides. It is becoming less common to see paper (hard-copy) documentation. Documentation is distributed via websites, software products, and other on-line applications. Professionals educated in this field are termed documentalists. This field changed its name to information science in 1968, but some uses of the term documentation still exists and there have been efforts to reintroduce the term documentation as a field of study.