Central Name Index

Scope and content

Due to the variety of types and sources of the CNI cards as well as the different methods the ITS applied to the creation of new references, the CNI appears to be a conglomerate of a variety of different card formats with a varying degree of information on the person the particular card refers to. The relationship to the individuals is established by their last and first names, maiden names - if applicable - and their dates of birth and sometimes widened by additional information such as place of birth or date of death.

TheArolsen Archives differentiates between three basic categories of cards:

* Self-contained cards, also referred to as original cards by the ITS are cards that have been taken over from other organizations and generally contain all information available in the particular context rather than referring to any file or document within the collections hold by the ITS. Only exceptionally, such self-contained card may refer to a file created and being processed by a predecessor of the ITS, which is being maintained within the ITS documentation.

* Reference cards have been produced – either by the ITS, one of its predecessors, or any organization participating in the early times’ searching and tracing activities – for the purpose of supporting the tracing process, i.e. identifying other cards (outside the CNI), files or lists where additional information on a given person will be contained. The way of referring to a document ranges from an exact description of the list or its content over a copy of the document scaled down to CNI format to a more or less precise indication of the document’s location, e.g. by folder and page number. Due to the integration of self standing card files in the early times and repeated carding (i.e. opening up of the documentation with respect to personal data) of smaller parts of the document holdings, certain reference cards – still available in the CNI – may have become redundant.
Inquiry cards have been produced by the ITS for each inquiry being processed carrying the personal data of the inquired person together with any additional information as provided by the inquirer. During certain periods of time additional cards had been produced carrying the inquirers’ personal data.

* Internal hints have been inserted into thze CNI to indicate specific deviations from the phonetic sort order as defined by the Basic Rules of the CNI

* Alphabetic/Phonetic System. They are placed in a position where you would expect a particular name or group of names and provide you an alternative spelling of the name pointing to the CNI segment where the cards containing such names are located.

In many cases the category of the card is not obvious at a first glance. Rather, the card’s content has to be analyzed and the decision to be taken on the basis of some background knowledge.