750,000 India Office Records (IOR) catalogue descriptions have recently been uploaded to the National Archives’ Discovery platform, providing access while the British Library’s Explore Archives and Manuscripts catalogue is out of action.
27 May 2024Blog series Untold lives
Researchers can use this catalogue to search for IOR materials, make a note of relevant references, and then visit the British Library to order material for consultation.
This post provides an overview of what’s included, what isn’t, and tips on how to use the Discovery platform.
The records uploaded consist of the majority of the official IOR collections, including records of the East India Company, the Board of Control for the Affairs of India, the India Office and the Burma Office.
Older IOR descriptions in Discovery were deleted and replaced with updated versions dating from April 2023.
The following IOR classes, record groups or fonds have been uploaded:
Recent additions to the India Office Private Papers (IOPP) have not yet been uploaded.
Entries for index volumes (IOR/Z) have not been uploaded, as they lack descriptive information and are more easily browsed and located using the physical lists in the British Library Asian and African Studies Reading Room.
Discovery primarily holds catalogue records for the National Archives, but also hosts descriptions from over 3,500 other UK archive repositories.
There are extensive help guides to be found in the Discovery help pages, but we will show you a couple of helpful tips below.
You can use the Filters to restrict search results to records held by the British Library. For the India Office Records, use the ‘British Library: Asian and African Studies’ filter, found under ‘Other archives’.
Filter selection for 'British Library: Asian and African Studies' on the National Archives' Discovery platform.
The India Office Records are organised into record groups as discussed above. If you know which record group you wish to use you can easily find it by searching for its reference in quotations, e.g. 'IOR/E' will return the entry for the East India Company General Correspondence.
You can view records within this section by using the ‘(browse here from hierarchy)' link at the top of the description.
The hierarchy link is above the IOR/E catalogue description.
This will show you the ‘child’ records of IOR/E on the right-hand side of the screen, as well as listing the other higher level IOR descriptions in reference order.
IOR/E, with child records.
If you wanted to see all the higher level IOR descriptions arranged in reference order, you could search for “IOR/A” (note the quotation marks), click into the description, then select ‘browse here from hierarchy’.
Similarly, if you search on a subject and topic and find an interesting entry, you can navigate using the hierarchy to browse other records within the sequence. For example, a search for 'Irrigation control Iraq' returns IOR/L/PS/20/C253/1, f 162, a map showing irrigation control in central and lower Iraq. The hierarchy can then be used to view the descriptions for the military report containing the map, the books within the Political and Secret Department Library ‘C’ Range, or the records of the whole departmental library.
The hierarchy for IOR/L/PS/20/C253/1.
The advanced search option can be used to specify search term combinations within reference groupings and dates.
For example, a search for ‘tax’ within reference IOR/L/PJ (Political and Judicial Department) for the years 1880-1900 returns 52 records.
Search results for tax within IOR/L/PJ, 1880-1900.
This blog is part of our Untold Lives series, sharing stories of people’s lives from our collections. Stories from around the world, from the dawn of history to the present day, are told through the written word, images, audio-visual and digital materials.
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