Catalogue description Records of the Library, Research Department and Research and Library Department

From the beginning of 1950 a revised filing system was adopted by the Foreign Office. This system was based on:

• i) an initial letter (or letters) indicating the Department concerned
• ii) a file number
• iii) a further number indicating the particular paper in the file

Departmental index letters:

• L Library and Research
• L Miscellaneous
• LF Facilities
• LH Health
• LM Conferences
• LP Publications
• LR Research
• LS State Papers

The first librarian of the Foreign Office was appointed in 1801. The post of librarian was occupied for most of the nineteenth century by father and son: Lewis Hertslet (1810-1857) and Sir Edward Hertslet (1857-1896). The library had custody of both the printed library and the manuscript correspondence of the office. To these duties were later added the making of a register and index of the correspondence (in 1810) and the preparation of memoranda.

In addition, the librarian was superintendent of king's (queen's) messengers from 1824 to 1854, when the superintendence passed to the chief clerk. In 1890 the register and index were discontinued, but from 1900 indexing was again entrusted to the Library. In 1906 a new system of dealing with the correspondence of the office was introduced and this involved the establishment of a Registry, subordinate to the librarian.

The system was revised in 1920 and the existing Central Registry and sub-registries were replaced by a single registry divided into three branches: classification, Archives and Despatch. These handled the registration, indexing and distribution of all incoming and outgoing correspondence, and generated docket sheets, précis jackets and entries in the chronological files (which have nor survived) and the day books for each transaction.

After the First World War the Historical Section, set up during the war as a temporary measure, was retained and made the responsibility of the librarian, who also took over responsibility for preparing parliamentary papers from the dissolved Parliamentary Department (first set up in 1903). From 1941 to 1944 the Library included a British Council Section, the librarian acting as the Foreign Office's representative on the executive committee of the council. In 1946 the Registry became independent as the Archives Department and between 1946 and 1959 the Library was combined with the Research Department.

The Research Department was formed in April 1943 from the Weekly Intelligence Summary Section of the Political Intelligence Department and the Foreign Research and Press Service, which had been administered by the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) under a Foreign Office grant from the outbreak of war in 1939.

The Research Department was charged with the collection and collation of background and historical information from unofficial as well as official sources for the Foreign Office, the Foreign Service and other government departments and official organisations. The department also took over some of the work of the Political Intelligence Department including German and Austrian intelligence and work concerning the Far East, when that Department was dissolved in 1946.

In 1945 it was decided that the Research Department and the Library should be combined, and the new department was formally established in 1946 when the post of director of research was re-styled director of research, librarian and keeper of the papers. That arrangement lasted until 1959 when the library reverted to its independent status under the headship of a librarian and a keeper of the papers.