Information Management of British Military Intelligence: The Work of the Documentalists, 1909-1945

Brunt, Rodney M.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/49312 Copy

Description

Title

Information Management of British Military Intelligence: The Work of the Documentalists, 1909-1945

Author(s)

Brunt, Rodney M.

Issue Date

2013

Keyword(s)

• British security services
• Documentalists

Abstract

After describing briefly the activities of information officers in the early decades of British security services MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, otherwise known as MI6), the work of these documentalists is thereafter explored in the wider context of the information manager in the knowledge organization. Early in the twentieth century, MI5 created its Registry to ensure the efficient use of the information it gathered on suspect aliens. Its equivalent in SIS, housed in Room 40 Admiralty Old Building, was concerned with signals intercepted first on cables and later transmitted by wireless. The Second World War saw similar operations, including those of the London Reception Centre (LRC) and of the Government Code & Cypher School (GCCS) in Bletchley Park. This paper describes briefly the means by which the intelligence could be put to efficient use to provide effective and efficient support to their customers, the “spycatchers,” “the watch,” and the researchers, or “back room.”

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ISSN

1559-0682

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/49312

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2013.0048

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2013 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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