The study aims to find out whether and how important conceptual reference models of social communication: Shannon-Weaver's model of the general communication system, Jakobson's model of language communication, and the conceptual model of bibliographic information IFLA LRM can contribute to the formation of the document theory. Using the results of the analysis of these models, an own working model of the document is created, within which a solution to the relationship between the notion of document and the related concepts of information, information resource and medium is proposed, and the possibility of modeling the granularity and typology of documents is assessed.