Introduction
Filing systems of records is one of the most essential parts of preserving important records for the future use. It is highly essential for convenient identification, storage and retrieval of records. Different countries follow different filing systems according to the nature of the records and mode of retrieval. Historically stating earliest known system of keeping records in order, was the registry system. The essential feature from which the system derives its name is the register. This system had its beginnings in ancient Rome, when the magistrate began keeping private notes, which was known as commenterii of matters that come before each day. The notes were soon developed into daily court Journal’s or commenterii diurni in which entries were made in chronological orders for all incoming and outgoing documents, including minutes of judicial proceedings, evidence and submitted by litigants and other records. Towards the end of the end of the Roman Republic, these daily court journals, were accepted as legal evidence, and given official status and became part of the holdings of the Public Archives. Under the imperial administrators that followed, various government departments kept registers similar to the court journals. For instances the official Acts of the emperor were registered in the commenterii principles.
This kind of system emerged when man first started drawing or depicting things on caves than later this all changed into different forms and this process of filing records changes with due course of time and according to the material available. The churches and other allied ecclesiastical organisations also followed the Roman practice. After the establishment of modern kingdom, the activities of the government rapidly increased. The invention of paper as cheap and chief writing material since the second half of the 14th century, the production od records increased considerably. A number of administrative organs such as financial, secretariat, Royal Household, Judicial and others paved the way for the growth of records and documents.
Under the primitive registry system, the records of an office were kept in the simple service; one consisting of outward and the other of inward papers. The documents were assigned numbers consecutively. The numbers were the key by which the documents in both inward and outward services were controlled. They provided a means of reference to the writers and subjects of documents, in that index reference to persons and subjects were keyed to them.
During the 19th century, records management got substantial growth when classification system was introduced. The ancient traditional registry system was gradually modified by devising new method on the basis of the well-established classification system. The filing of record system can vary from country to country according to the condition in which they are in and according to the sources available to them.
