Learn English – Collective noun for “facts”

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I'm looking to refer to a group of facts and I'm not sure what the best term to use for them would be. From what I can tell there isn't any sort of standard collective noun for facts, so it's going to be a more a question of what the better way of stating it would be.

To illustrate, a collection of pages may make up a book, so a book of pages makes sense.

But what makes sense for a collection of facts?

Edit 1: to clarify here, I am looking to have the blank filled in: a _ of facts.

Edit 2: The context is that there are a large amount of small facts. Things like "The battle of Hastings was fought in 1066". I need to refer to various set collections of these facts when speaking to people, and so need a collective term for them. If each fact were a card, I would call a set collection of them a deck. So the use would be in a sentence like this: When I was learning history I found John's very useful.

Best Answer

Consider brief, précis, survey, overview, conspectus, digest, compilation, compendium, collation, corpus. A brief, for example, is "An attorney's legal argument in written form..." but formerly was also used as "A summary, précis or epitome; an abridgement or abstract", which all are forms of collections of facts. Collation is a surprisingly versatile word, the relevant meaning here being "A collection, a gathering" rather than "5. Any light meal or snack" or more-specialized "2. The Collationes Patrum ...", "3. A reading held from the work mentioned above...", and "4. The light meal taken by monks after the reading service mentioned above". For survey the relevant meaning is "A particular view; an examination ... of all the parts or particulars of a thing", which is how it is used in the phrase survey article, "... a paper that is a work of synthesis, ... a survey or summary of a field".

Update 1 I disagree in general with the comment

Each of the above defines the way the facts have been compiled, the nature of the source, or something qualifie[d]. None of them seems to be an unqualified substitute for 'a collection of facts'. – Kris

but will address it only for compendium. Wiktionary shows "1. A short, complete summary; an abstract" and "2. A list or collection of various items". To a question like "Have you got anything about it?", one could reasonably reply either of

Here is a compendium of facts for you to look at.
Here is a compendium for you to look at.

but in the former "of facts" seems redundant.

Note, compendious is an adjective for which Wiktionary shows "1. containing a subset..., succinctly described; abridged and summarized" and "2. briefly describing a body of knowledge". Certainly the latter sense is appropriate for "collection of facts". On the other hand, the definition and synonyms of it inject a qualification of brevity.

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