There is vast duplication of names of prisoners and information relating to them throughout the volumes. There are discrepancies in the spelling of names, information regarding military organizations, dates of capture, and other data. The volumes have no standard overall arrangement. Some volumes have page or folio umbers, but many pages are unnumbered. A few volumes contain name indexes.
Various numbers indicating several prior numbering schemes appear in the volumes.
In general, the significance of the numbers is obscure. For these reasons, and to prevent confusion in the citation of volume numbers, the volumes have been renumbered by the National Archives in a continuous series from 1 to 427. The records under the second heading have been further arranged by the name of the particular prison or station to which the records pertain. A third section contains a few records of several prisons. Not all of the records relating to Confederate prisoners of war are reproduced here.