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Records and publications
| Term | What it means | Where you meet it |
|---|
| The City Record | The city's own daily publication of official notices, and the source behind much of this site | The Official source link on a notice |
| Notice | One published item — a solicitation, an award, a hearing announcement, a rule proposal | Everywhere records are listed |
| Solicitation | A published invitation to respond to something the city wants to buy | Contracts |
| Award | A published statement of who the city intends to give the work to | Contracts |
| Registration | The step after an award that puts a contract in force, published as its own record | The contract lifecycle on a notice |
| Rule | A change to how an agency does something, which must be published before it is adopted | Rules |
| Mandate | A duty an agency has under a law — to report, to make a rule, to hold something — which its publications are evidence about | Connected mandate on a notice |
| Matter | One thing being decided, which several records can belong to | Meetings and contracts |
| Land-use project | An application to change what may be built or how land is used, moving through a published review | Land |
| Exam | A civil-service examination, with its own filing window, conditions and later eligible list | Exams |
| Eligible list | The ranked list of people who passed an exam, from which agencies hire | Exams |
Bodies and geographies
| Term | What it means | Why it is easy to confuse |
|---|
| Agency | A city department or office that publishes and acts | Agencies are renamed. A renamed agency keeps one page here |
| Community Board | An appointed local board, numbered inside a borough | Board 7 exists in more than one borough, so a number alone is not a board |
| Community district | The area a Community Board covers | It is a place. The board is a body |
| City Council District | The area one Council Member represents, numbered citywide | Its lines do not follow community district lines |
| Borough president | The elected office for one of the five boroughs, which reviews land-use applications | Its recommendation is not the decision |
| City Planning Commission | The body that reviews land-use applications before the City Council | One stage of a review, not the end of it |
| Vendor | An organization named on a procurement record | The published name is used exactly. Spellings are not merged |
Connections and evidence
| Term | What it means | Where you meet it |
|---|
| Connection | A claim that two published records refer to the same thing | Between any two linked records |
| How this connection was made | The panel giving the basis for a connection, its relation and its official source | On a connected record |
| Matched by a published record | Joined on an identifier the publisher issued — the strongest basis | In that panel |
| Record-linkage match | Joined on content such as a name rather than an identifier | In that panel |
| Person-accepted | A pairing someone reviewed and accepted | In that panel |
| Official source | The link to the city's own published copy of the record | On every record |
| Claim link | The address of a page with one connection already inspected, which can be shared | Your browser's address bar |
Dates and gaps
| Term | What it means | What it is not |
|---|
| Official date | The date the record is about — a hearing, a deadline, an effective date | Not the publication date |
| Publication date | When the city put the record out | Not the date of the event |
| As of day | A filter keeping only records dated on or before a day you choose | Not a snapshot of what this site knew then |
| Data vintage | How current the underlying source is | Not a promise nothing has been published since |
| Last reviewed | When an editor last checked a guide article against the live site | Nothing about the records |
| Estimate | A range drawn from comparable past records, always labelled | Never an official deadline |
| Not published | No public, joinable release of this field is known | Not a statement that nothing happened |
| Not shown here yet | The city publishes this and CityScroll has not joined it | Not a gap in the city's publishing |
Identifiers
| Identifier | What it identifies | Where it comes from |
|---|
| PIN | One procurement, which several contract records can share | Published on City Record procurement notices |
| Request ID | One City Record notice | The City Record |
| BBL | One tax lot — borough, block and lot together | City property and tax records |
| Exam number | One civil-service examination | The Department of Citywide Administrative Services |
| Project ID | One land-use application, such as 2022M0258 | The Zoning Application Portal |
| Mandate ID | One duty, such as 64116-001 | An address on this site. The duty itself carries the law it comes from, cited on its page |
Things this site does
Sources used in this article
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