The top ten literature information resources refer to books, newspapers, dissertations, conference materials, patent documents, scientific and technological reports, product materials, scientific and technological archives, standard materials, governments and publications.

Knowledge and information resources recorded on various carriers in the form of words, graphics, symbols, audio and video. Including: books, series of publications (periodicals, newspapers, etc. ), brochures, papers, patents, standards, meeting minutes, government publications, etc.

It records countless useful facts, data, theories, methods, assumptions, experiences and lessons, and is a basic tool for human beings to communicate across time and space, understand and transform the world.

As the most commonly used and important information source in modern society, it has the following characteristics:

(1) systematization. The information recorded in documents is often knowledge-based information processed by human brain, and it is the cognitive achievement formed by human beings in the process of understanding and transforming the world.

After a series of thinking information processing activities such as selection, comparison, evaluation, analysis, induction and generalization, they are expressed in the unique symbol system of human beings, most of which are systematic and in-depth, easy to express abstract concepts and theories, and can better reflect the essence and laws of things.

(2) stability. Literature information is solidified on paper, chemical materials or magnetic materials through words, graphics, audio-visual images or other code symbols, which has strong stability and is not easy to be deformed during dissemination and use, thus providing accurate and reliable basis for people's understanding and decision-making activities.

(3) Ease of use. Users can choose what they are interested in according to their personal needs, and decide when, where and how to use the document. When they encounter problems, they can have enough time to think over them, and they can supplement and verify them with other documents.

④ Controllability. It is convenient to manage and control document information. Once the information content is edited and published into various documents, it is easy to process it, control its quantity and quality, flow and flow direction, and achieve the purpose of orderly flow of document information.

(5) Time lag. Because it takes some time to make files, there is a problem of file lag. The long time lag of literature will lead to the obsolescence of literature content and lose or weaken its use value as an information source.