Inventory of FCO Archive

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) records archive contains an estimated 1.2 million records in paper, microform and other formats. Around 50% of the records in the archive are FCO departmental or post files.

Another 50% are FCO special collection archive files. These special collection records consist of around 600,000 files outside the FCO corporate file plan. The records relate to the work of the FCO and may have been created by the FCO or its predecessors as well as by other organisations.

In line with the recommendations of the Cary report into the colonial administration files, the FCO has recently completed a full inventory of its archive holdings.

The linear meterage of each record series is an estimate based on the standard dimensions of archival boxes. The item count is also an estimate and is specific to the type of record. For instance a single map or a single paper file (which may contain around 100 pages) each count as one item. For microfilm, every sequence of one hundred images is counted as one item (by analogy with the size of a typical paper file) and it is assumed that each roll of microfilm contains a full set of images.

The inventory provides a snapshot of the working tool used to manage this process.

英国外交及联邦事务部（FCO）的档案记录库包含约120万份纸质、缩微胶卷及其他格式的文件。其中，约50%的档案记录属于FCO部门或外事机构的文件。剩余的50%则为FCO特别收藏档案文件，这些特别收藏记录约60万份，超出FCO企业文件计划范围。这些记录涉及FCO的工作内容，可能由FCO或其前身机构，以及其他组织创建。遵循对殖民行政文件进行的凯里报告的建议，FCO最近已完成对其档案馆藏的全面清点。每条记录系列的线性米数是根据档案箱的标准尺寸进行估算的。项目数量也是一个估算值，且针对不同类型的记录具体而定。例如，一张单独的地图或一份单独的纸质文件（可能包含约100页）均计为一个项目。对于缩微胶卷，每100张图像的序列计为一个项目（类比典型纸质文件的大小），并假定每卷缩微胶卷包含完整图像集。该清单提供了用于管理此过程的操作工具的快照。