A manuscript is any document that is written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to being mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect way. Manuscripts can be found in hundreds of different languages and scripts, and they can be written on various materials such as paper, bark, cloth, metal, palm leaf, or any other material that has significant scientific, historical, or aesthetic value. Manuscripts can be personal papers or organizational, institutional, or business records, and they can be in the form of a scroll, book, or codex. Manuscripts are often valuable sources of information about the culture, history, and beliefs of a time period, and they can provide a wealth of knowledge content. In the context of library science, a manuscript is defined as any hand-written item in the collections of a library or an archive, and such manuscript collections are described in finding aids, similar to an index or table of contents to the collection, in accordance with national and international content standards such as DACS and ISAD(G) . A collection guide or finding aid is a detailed inventory of the content of a manuscript collection, which helps researchers identify the boxes or folder of interest within a collection.