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INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THE INVENTORY
The on-line inventory contains up to 10 information fields on each collection. Information is present in most fields for most collections, but is absent if it was not entered at the time the collection was originally registered at ITS. The information fields are as follows:
- Sheet Name (by spans of years in which collections were registered);
- Collection number (an arbitrarily assigned number for inventory processing purposes and is not a useful search field);
- A brief Description of the collection;
- The Source of the collection (what organization or individual deposited the materials, or what is the source archive of copies of documentation held elsewhere);
- Accession Date (the date the collection was registered at ITS);
- Number of Pages in the collection (sometimes shown file by file within a particular collection);
- Number of (victim) Names that appear in the collection;
- ITS File Location (the physical location where the collection is filed at the ITS archives in Bad Arolsen);
- Document Type (whether the documents in the collection are originals or copies);
- Carded (a notation made on occasion, but not consistently, to indicate that the names in the collection had been entered into the Central Name Index; this is not a useful field for search purposes, and the working assumption today is that victim names from all of the historical collections are in the Central Name Index).
The information fields for collections registered after June 2000, which were received in digital form, are slightly different because of the digital medium, but the essential information fields are the same. The single exception is the lack of collection-by-collection registration date. They can all be viewed as a group, however, through the "Sheet Name" search described below.
"Document type" indicates whether the documents are "originals" or "copies." Some subcategories of documents registered as copies are "Abschriften" (duplicates), "Fotokopien" (photocopies), "Rückvergrößerungen" (microfilm prints), and "Filme" (microfilm). It is important to bear in mind that some "copies" that exist at ITS are in fact "original copies," that is, the only known examples of the documents in question.
As the digitization process of the ITS archives proceeds, collections and the files within collections will all receive unique digital archive identification numbers, which may be added in later versions of the inventory.
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