For a large archive there may be a dozen or so volumes. The shelves of the catalogue room hold some 800 volumes, the slimmest of them comprising only a few pages. An increasing number of schedules are becoming available on this website as part of the Department's project to convert them into digital form.
Schedules vary greatly in the level and depth of description and in quality.
The word 'schedule' itself, a lawyer's word, was adopted in the Department in its early days and can designate any form of catalogue or list. Few of the large archives or collections in the Department are not represented by a schedule of some sort, though the schedule may only be a 'preliminary' one, or may cover only part of the archive. Few schedules have indexes of their own, other than personal name indexes in some cases, but some two thirds of them have by now been covered by the Index to Schedules. Apart from archives and collections represented by schedules which are not yet indexed, the main area at present difficult of quick access is that of the small archives and collections which often consist of only a few boxes. Many of these are covered by schedules, but many again are covered only by summary descriptions in the Annual Reports.