The concept of document has been defined as any concrete or symbolic indication, preserved

or recorded, for reconstructing or for proving a phenomenon, whether physical or

mental" (Briet, 1951, 7; here quoted from Buckland, 1991).
A much cited article asked "what is a document" and concluded this way: The evolving notion of
document among (Jonathan Priest). Otlet, Briet, Schrmeyer, and the
other documentalists increasingly emphasized whatever functioned as a document rather than
traditional physical forms of documents. The shift to digital technology would seem to make this
distinction even more important. Levys thoughtful analyses have shown that an emphasis on the
technology of digital documents has impeded our understanding of digital documents as documents
(e.g., Levy, 1994[2]). A conventional document, such as a mail message or a technical report, exists
physically in digital technology as a string of bits, as does everything else in a digital environment.
As an object of study, it has been made into a document. It has become physical evidence by those
who study it.
Value of document research exemplified: Aviation to many is an esoteric subject. It is an intricate
combination of men, machines and environment. Because of the technological faade that
predominates aviation, people are almost unaware of its aesthetic make up particularly that of flight.
This has serious implications for aviation education. Even the professionals handling safety of flights
and passengers are sort of realization of literary values of aviation that basically deals with flights.
Scholarly intervention for educating youths and aviation professionals on matters of safety, too, is
rare. The object of ones research may be the aviation documents dedicated to safety of flights and
human beings that travel by air which contains plethora of concrete and symbolic indications of
physical and mental phenomena that it has recorded. These indications have not been addressed in
a manner that could contribute to peoples arousal, awareness and interest towards aviation. The
study may be designed to claim that the deep structure of aviation safety documents posit
philosophical and literary features of high aesthetic and educational values, which the study seeks to
explore. These ontological and literary values can be elaborated in a way that facilitates creating rich
aviation literature having implications for disciplinary education of the aviation professionals at work
for safety. The implications of study for research intervention at tertiary university level may also be
discussed. A qualitative researcher may undertake to analyse the text inductively as well as
deductively within post structural critical perspective utilizing interpretive auto-ethnographic strategy.
(Baral, Saurabh R., 2014. Aviation English: A study of the ontological and literary dimensions of
aviation safety documents and their implications for aviation education. A concept proposal for PhD
in English. Self)