Sub-series consists of a microfiche copy of a portion of the card index system created and maintained by the Indian and Inuit Affairs Program, Central Records Office, to facilitate the location and retrieval of files. Prior to the introduction of automated records management systems, the Indian and Inuit Affairs central records office, like many government records offices, relied on a card system (commonly referred to, collectively, as "history cards") to provide intellectual control over its central registry files. The central tool in such a system was the history card itself - an index card created for each file on which was recorded the "history" of the file throughits life-cycle from active to dormant status and, ultimately, destruction or transfer to the National Archives. A number of ancillary tools and indexes were required to facilitate manipulation of the history cards. This system has been in use within the Indian and Inuit Affairs Program (IIAP) central records office since at least the introduction of the Modified Duplex Numeric file classification system in the 1950s. This sub-series does not contain the history cards themselves for wither the Modified Duplex Numeric file classification system or the Block Numeric system which succeeded it. Those history cards are still in IIAP custody. What this sub-series does include is a microfiche copy of indexes to the history cards for the Modified Duplex Numeric file classification system. These indexes are useful, only to a point, in identifying and determining the whereabouts of files created in the Modified Duplex Numeric system. Given that the filming was done in the early 1980s, the information captured on the fiche is not current. For example, although they indicate the disposition (e.g., destruction, transfer to the National Archives, re-numbering) of files up to c.1981, they do not reflect changes in a file's status since that date. The sub-series also contains a microfiche copy of a number of the ancillary tools and indexes used to facilitate manipulation of the history cards for the Modified Duplex Numeric file classification system. In addition, an important feature of this sub-series is the fact that it includes a number of tools that trace the whereabouts of records created in file classification systems that precede the Modified Duplex Numeric system (e.g., Red Series, Black Series, 1000 Series, etc.). The filing system of the Indian and Inuit Affairs Program and its predecessors has undergone major re-organizations since the first central registry was established. These have involved the introduction of new classification systems with the attendant amalgamation and/or re-numbering of files. Card indexes available in this sub-series provide the vital links that allow for tracing of a file through the various stages of its life both within the file classification system in which it was originally created and in successor systems into which it was transferred.
The twenty-nine individual indexes that make up this collection are of different types and, hence, uses. Some provide DIAND file references (and in many instances National Archives volume numbers) for entire classification systems. There are cards which cross-reference the Red and Black Series, the First Series, the Thousand Series and the Modified Duplex Numeric system. Some tools are listings of blocks of files transferred to the National Archives. Others are subject-oriented listings of files, e.g., "Oil and Gas Alpha", "Oil and Gas Numerical", "Lands Alpha", "Islands", "Land Sales". Some are simply tools to facilitate use of the other indexes. The "Reserves Alpha", "Bands Alpha" indexes, for example, are alphabetical lists giving reserve and band numbers and "old" and "new" responsibility centre codes although they do not provide full file references. One, the "Alpha Subject Index" is especially useful as a finding aid to files in the most recent Modified Duplex Numeric system in that it provides subject access points that are more refined than what can be discerned from file block titles in the subject file classification system manual. Finally, it is important to underline that the tools in this sub-series describe and index files created by the IIAP, not simply the much smaller sub-set of records that have come into the cusotdy of the National Archives. Many of the records referred to in these tools remain in IIAP custody.
The microfiche are consecutively numbered (1-898) and separated into individual indexes bound in volumes 10884-10887.
