Gov. Code, § 12271

For the purposes of this article, the following terms shall have the following meanings:

(a) “Acquire” includes acquisition by gift, purchase, lease, eminent domain, or otherwise.

(b) “Archival value” means the ongoing usefulness or significance of a record based on the administrative, legal, fiscal, evidential, or historical information it contains, justifying its permanent preservation.

(c) “Public record plant” means the plant, or any part thereof, or a record therein, of a person engaged in the business of searching or publishing public records or insuring or guaranteeing titles to real property, including copies of public records or abstracts and memoranda taken from public records that are owned by or in possession of that person or that are used by that person in that person’s business.

(d) “Public use form” means a form used by the state to obtain or to solicit facts, opinions, or other information from the public or a private citizen, partnership, corporation, organization, business trust, or nongovernmental entity or legal representative thereof.

(e) “Record” has the same meaning as “public records” as defined in Section 7920.530 and includes, but is not limited to, a writing containing information relating to the conduct of the public’s business prepared, owned, used, or retained by a state or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics. Library and museum materials made or acquired and preserved solely for reference or exhibition purposes and stocks of publications and of processed documents are not included within the definition of the term “record” as used in this article.