Hi Vickie, Records registries are often discussed by archivists and further discussion of them can be found in the books on the history of archives and archival practice. It was a way of providing a high level of detail about specific sets of documents that often were used to provide legal rights and protect legal interests. Later it was often used to record a high level of detail by secretarial types believing it was the best way to provide a high level of efficiency to filing systems, but involved a great deal of labor to keep up to date and complete. Today archivists often use a more streamlined approach to tracking modern records. Today, the use of bar-coding often serves to generate the number and record the information on the document through label application that used to involve a clerk and hand tools, and a report listing the barcode with the associated document serves to create a log of registered documents, or a registry. In the old days, this was all done by hand by applying a sequential number to the document matching the order entry in a physical log. The purpose was often to provide a numeric name alternative that could be unique and used to catalogue a document without elaborating on each detail and also helped to avoid the idiosyncratic naming issues in a filing schema. Numbers are discrete, whereas linguistic naming can be arbitrary. For example, if you were recording a record series, say birth certificates, a registry, however made, would record (perhaps)the year of issue and the sequential number of a particular document say 2009-001. Or, it could record the number of certificates issued from the beginning of that particular system, say # 2000001, for a very old and busy system. You could also further clarify with coding, BC2009.001 (Birth Certificate number 1, issued 2009) and so on. A log (or registry) showing the particulars associated with that numbered certificate would constitute a registry, It could show name, date of issue, place of issue, mother, father and so on, as extensive a series of particulars as you wished to make. A reverse registry ( or index) might list the certificates by father's name, or place of issue first. Hope this helps. A.S.Elizabeth Fairfax Island County Records and Information Management Program e-mail: [log in to unmask] x5569 -----Original Message----- From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Huntsman, Vicki Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 11:13 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [RM] Records Registries Does anyone know sources of information about records registries List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message. mailto:[log in to unmask]