In 1996, the ICRC archives opened their doors to external readers for the first time. The question then arose as to how to make the collections searchable and accessible to the public. If the collections were to be made available to the public, the public would have to know what to order in the reading room!

Following a model then widely used in other archive services, the reading room was given a space dedicated to ‘inventories’. These took the form of bundles of various sizes describing the different archive collections accessible to the public[1]. Readers were invited to browse the inventories and decide which references they wish to consult. Over the years, the inventories have gradually been put online in the form of pdf files that can be consulted remotely, allowing anyone to get an idea of the archival fonds of the ICRC General Archives. In February 2025, the ICRC General Archives launched an online catalogue, enabling users to browse the various inventories.

Inventories in the reading rooms, ACICR

Inventories are tools that are sometimes misunderstood by readers: it is not really possible, for example, to search an inventory by keyword, or to select a specific author. In reality, the main purpose of the inventory is to reconstruct the context in which the documents were produced and the administrative history of the collection. To analyse a document, it is important to understand the context in which it was produced, issued and received. Inventories provide this context. The result of long and painstaking work by archivists, they constitute a very important corpus and provide keys to analysing the various fonds held in the ICRC archives.

Inventories are currently drawn up in accordance with the ISAD(G) archival standard developed by the International Council on Archives. However, the practice of compiling inventories has obviously evolved considerably over time, and other research tools have existed in the ICRC archives since the nineteenth century. In this short article, we propose to take a brief look at some of them.

Mail registration, folios and numbers

At the end of the 19th century, most of the documentation held in the General Archives consisted of incoming and outgoing correspondence, as well as a series of working files. In material terms, this collection of documents represents only a few linear metres and is organised mainly chronologically.

Volumes of outgoing correspondences. ACICR A AF B

Incoming mail is grouped by country of origin and then arranged in chronological order of receipt. For example, A AF A-08.02 contains all the letters received by the Committee from people in the United Kingdom between 1863 and 1886. The outgoing mail is in the form of a series of bound volumes in which all outgoing correspondences have been transcribed onto carbon paper[2].

The documentation for the ICRC’s first missions, such as the 1875 mission to Montenegro, is very thin, consisting of no more than twenty or so sheets that give a glimpse of the outlines of a mission, without being able to dispel a number of grey areas for which the preserved documentation remains silent[3]. The archives were mainly conceived as an offshoot of the system for recording mail and working documents. Incoming and outgoing mail is subject to an incremental numbering system that assigns each document a specific reference: the folio. Documents are therefore recorded on an ‘itemised’ basis.

Each series has a reference number related to a specific mission. ACICR B Mis

From the 1920s onwards, the ICRC tried to keep better records of the documentation produced during the various missions sent to the field. Each mission was thus the subject of a ‘series’, a collection specially dedicated to the documents produced, received and dispatched during that mission. Each series has a specific reference number, which is usually accompanied by an inventory. These inventories list item by item all the documents relating to a mission. Once again, this is referred to as an ‘itemised’ inventory. These itemised inventories were often reworked when the archives were reorganised in the early 1950s. They are still kept today by the General Archives and take the form of very long lists organised in a three-column table: the first column gives a reference number to the document, the ‘folio’, the second column gives the date of the document, and the third column gives an abbreviated title of the document as well as any relevant information enabling a document to be identified quickly. Research in the archives with itemised inventories involve going through very long lists in which all documents are referred to.

Chronological order, thematic order?

Annexe to Clouzot’s report. ACICR B CR 229, liasses “à intégrer”.

In October 1942, the Commission de Coordination – the body that then exercised general direction over all the ICRC’s activities – set up an Archives and Library Commission [4]. It was tasked with ‘studying all questions relating to the organisation and conservation of the ICRC’s ancient and modern archives and the library at the Villa Moynier’ [5]. On this occasion, Étienne Clouzot presented a report dated 30 September 1942 in which he drew up an inventory of the various collections (Committee, Agency, Joint Commission)[6]. In this report, he indicated that the various departments enjoyed relative autonomy in the way they organised their working documents ‘according to particular filing methods that they felt were more appropriate for their purpose’. Attached to this document is a ‘general inventory which merely records the facts and indicates the filing method used in each division’. The first few pages concern the Agency archives, while the last page focuses on what would now be the general fonds. Clouzot notes that ‘in the secretariat, chronological filing is the rule up to the Committee archives (series G) […]’.

In fact, the classification of the B CR sub-fonds follows a sort of chronological order (as the conflicts, cases, conferences and other situations with which the ICRC is confronted arise). For sub-fonds B G, on the other hand, a slightly different system was devised in 1939: “the originals are classified and listed by subject. Each time a new question arises, a new call number is created”. Between 1939 and 1942, several subject headings were created as and when the ICRC encountered new issues. One of the most important files, for example, is B G 003, which relates to missions carried out by delegates. The decision to create a new file number (and therefore a new subject) was taken by the archives, via Miss Jung[7] ‘secretaries who feel it necessary to create a new file (sic) are asked to submit their suggestion to the archives department’ [8]. [8]. Unfortunately, the archives are silent on the negotiation process leading to the creation of a new file number. This process was certainly the result of oral negotiations between the various officials. The B G classification plan is therefore the result of ongoing negotiations over time between the various departments and the archives. If we take the definition of the Abrégé d’archivistique [9]], we cannot say that the system is exactly ‘perennial’ since it records changes over time. The archivists nevertheless endeavoured to set up a relatively efficient registration system by grafting the allocation of call numbers onto the mail registration service. However, this was not without a few ‘hitches’: for example, a reference B G 100 was created before being abandoned and all the documents reintegrated into B G 009 “personnel sanitaire”.

Box from the card library covering letter “I”, ACICR

At the end of the Second World War, the volume of working documents received by the ICRC archives increased significantly. Archivists were therefore looking for more effective research tools for their collections. To this end, a ‘General Archives File’ was set up in December 1944 [10]. This file was based on the model of the American ‘dictionary catalogues’. It consisted of a series of card libraries containing alphabetically organised cards. The cards deal with various subjects

– people with whom the ICRC came into contact in the course of its activities;

– the associations, Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and other institutions with which the ICRC deals; and

– the countries in which the ICRC does or does not operate;

– the ‘subjects’, which can cover an extremely wide range of fields: adoptions, boats, submarines, dental care,  movies, “homme de confiance”, spies, amnesiacs, and many others …

Each card is written in a standardised way: the main information received on each personality, organisation and theme is indicated in telegraphic style, before the archive reference where the relevant information can be found is added in red. To help you find way around the cards, small plastic bookmarks in different colours were added: green for the letters of the alphabet, yellow for countries and regions, blue for ethnic groups and nationalities, and red for subjects.

1951 and finally … the “Plan Pictet”!

Jean Pictet was a Swiss lawyer who first joined the ICRC in 1937. He had a brilliant career there, becoming successively director, director-general, before becoming a member of the Committee in 1967. Within the ICRC archives, he is known for having devised a particularly effective filing plan, which was used from 1951 until 1997. With the arrival of the ‘plan Pictet’, itemised inventories disappeared for good. Similarly, the research department file gradually tended to be abandoned and does not seem to have been updated since the 1960s. This filing plan has lasted a long time, which is characteristic of a ‘good’ filing plan. This criterion of sustainability is not easy to satisfy, because any institution is bound to evolve: the various departments go through reorganisations, new formats appear, working practices and the documentation produced change. Despite this, the Pictet filing plan has stood the test of time.

« The filing plan is an intellectual construction that structures the documents and files between them, often in the form of a multi-level tree structure. It must be easy to understand, usable by several people, at the same time or successively, and sustainable over time.  [11]»

This plan proposes four main guidelines. The first concerns ‘general affairs and permanent tasks outside assistance to victims’. A second set deals with relations with the various people with whom the ICRC may have come into contact: national societies, governments, international organizations, etc. A third set, which is particularly important in terms of size, brings together all the series dealing with victim assistance. A third set, which is particularly important in terms of size, brings together all the series dealing with victim assistance. It is in this set, for example, that the various reports on visits carried out by the ICRC and the various complaints received by the ICRC are listed. A fourth, smaller set deals with administrative and financial matters. It is in this series that we find the various donations received by the ICRC since the 1950s. Within the Pictet filing plan, most of the entries are structured around two numbers: the first number indicates the subject dealt with (detention, developments in international humanitarian law, material relief, etc.); the second number is a geographical code designating either a country or a specific geographical area. Over time, some geographical codes appear while others disappear and are gradually replaced.

Excerpt from the working documents left by the Paris delegation, 1955. Call numbers at the top right hand corner allowed the typists to know where was the information kept in ACICR D EUR France1-0375″.

This new filing plan is applied by the typists as soon as mail is sent and received: on each document, the numbers of the different subjects dealt with in the document are noted. Thus, for correspondence with a particular authority on a subject relating to detention, there will be several references: a reference number to indicate that it is correspondence with a government, a reference number to indicate that it is a document dealing with issues relating to detention, and so on. As the original document can only be physically stored in one place and under one reference number, copies are produced and circulated under all other relevant reference numbers. Although effective, this system of recording documentation required a great deal of rigour and discipline on the part of the various secretarial departments involved. In October 1951, Pierre Vibert sent a note to Jean Pictet pointing out the various shortcomings that were threatening the proper constitution and maintenance of the archives[12]. First of all, he was concerned that important correspondence was being recorded incorrectly and was only reaching the archives ‘several months late’. He also pointed out that some departments never sent copies of outgoing letters. He went on to accuse ICRC staff of taking documents directly from archive files and reported that some documents had been cut up to extract passages that were then pasted back into other documents. Finally, he points out that there is a problem of confidentiality and that some documents that are supposed to be kept in the safe are easy to obtain anywhere else in the institution.

Despite these difficulties, the Pictet filing plan proved effective and, in the end, there were very few gaps. Between 2002 and 2015, ICRC archivists carried out a major inventory, describing the B AG fonds in accordance with an international standard introduced by the International Council on Archives. This description work is long and delicate: it involves taking up all the files as they have been classified and describing their content, the subjects dealt with and placing each document in its context. Although tedious, this work is absolutely necessary and very generous towards future generations, because it is thanks to it that the collections become searchable and consultable.

How to use an inventory?

An inventory lists a certain number of bundles of documents, giving them precise references. It describes the contents of the fonds at a level of granularity determined by the archivists. An inventory gives an account of the constitution of an archive: it allows the context of production and reception of a set of working documents to be established. It highlights sets of documents according to an intellectual order established by the archivists. It provides information about the way in which documents have been used by the various departments of an institution

An inventory is not a thesaurus: it cannot be searched by keyword. If you enter the word ‘detention’ in the catalogue search bar, only fonds, sub-fonds, series, sub-series and bundles containing the word ‘detention’ in their title will appear. Any other document that does not contain this word in its title, even if it deals with subjects related to detention, will not appear.

You therefore need to adopt a different research strategy and ask yourself which departments, people and members of the institution were responsible for producing the information you are interested in. Based on this initial answer, you will try to determine what working documents were produced and how they were transmitted to the archives. It is absolutely crucial to read the note left by the archivist at the beginning of the inventory, as it explains how a set of documents was put together and transmitted. It also warns of the various source effects that may exist and gives the first indications of how to work on an archive.

For more information on how to work with our online catalogue, we invite you to watch the following two videos: :
– Exploring inventories and selecting documents.
– Reading a call number and citing an archival reference.

[1] The inventory is the direct result of the classification work carried out by the archivists: it provides the public with a precise description of the contents of the collections and the call numbers to be consulted. Each item is analysed and briefly described. ; In. Association des archivistes français, [ed.] Abrégé d’archivistique: principes et pratiques du métier d’archiviste. 4e éd., Association des archivistes français, 2020, p. 180.

[2] These are currently kept under the reference A AF B.

[3] This documentation is kept under the reference A AF A-21.13 and consists of a fairly thin file. Fortunately, Dr Ferrière’s private collection provides additional documentation, in particular the reference numbers P FF-03 et P FF-04.

[4] ACICR A PV B Coord Volume 4, Procès-verbal de la séance du mardi 6 octobre 1942.

[5] ACICR B CR 229, voir la boîte « à intégrer », 13 octobre 1942.

[6] Ibid., Rapport réalisé par Étienne Clouzot, septembre 1942.

[7] Marion Jung had a distinguished career as an archivist with the ICRC before moving to the UNESCO archives. See ACICR B AG 070 02, lettre à Marion Jung.

[8] ACICR B CR 229, voir la boîte « à intégrer », Note de service M 51, 18 novembre 1942.

[9] Association des archivistes français, [ed.]Abrégé d’archivistique: principes et pratiques du métier d’archiviste. 4e éd., Association des archivistes français, 2020, p.77.

[10] ACICR B CR 229-01, Fichier général des archives, 7 décembre 1944.

[11] Association des archivistes français, editor. Abrégé d’archivistique: principes et pratiques du métier d’archiviste. 4e éd., Association des archivistes français, 2020, p.77.

[12] ACICR B AG 070-002, Note de Vibert à Pictet, 31 octobre 1951.