A record artifact is an entity that is created by a person or persons for the purpose of providing other people with information about events or states of affairs.

In general, a record is virtual, that is, it is independent of its particular physical instantiation/s. It consists of information elements (usually words, phrases and sentences, but also numbers, graphs, and other information elements).

Record artifacts need not be complete reports or records. They can be parts of a larger Record artifact.

For example,

• • A  is a Record artifact that also may contain other Record artifacts in the form of individual documents or reports, e.g. . These may, in turn, contain more finely granular Record artifacts, such as sections, and even section headers e.g. .