Documents play a key role in the construction of social reality  The relative immutability of documents has thus historically been important for establishing a record of transient events, or for preserving information whose precise linguistic form is of ritual or practical importance.

Historical Documents are collectible documents that contain important information about a person, place, or event. Traditionally, the medium of a document was paper and the information was applied to it as ink either by hand as in hand-written document or by a mechanical process as in a printing press or printer.