The Registrar's archive comprises only the files of the Registrar and Secretary, and does not include any records of the administrative units for which the Registrar ultimately had responsibility.
The Registrar's office did not have a formal file registry, and no original inventory of files appears to have been kept, so it is impossible to say how extensive this series originally was, but it seems likely that only a small proportion of files were made available for assessment as archives. The file series is complementary to the Vice-Chancellor's files series (VCA/7), which were maintained in a more formal manner. It is often the case that subjects in both series overlapped, and in general where this has happened, the vice-chancellor's files contain more extensive and better quality information about the subject in hand. This being the case, where the same subject file existed in both series, only the vice-chancellor's file has been retained. The remaining Registrar's files which have been preserved therefore fell into the following categories: 1) unique to the Registrar's file series; 2) provided substantial additional information to the corresponding vice-chancellor's file. In some cases, subject areas were specific to the remit of the Registrar's Department and were not present in the Vice-Chancellor's series, and in other cases, it appears that a comparable vice-chancellor's file has not survived.