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In 1915 a multiple number subject filing system was introduced for all District Offices of the Department of Lands and Survey. Each District Office was required to adopt this file classification system.

Lands and Survey's core function of government and administration is covered in most of the major sub-series types. Additional sub-series were created to cover the administrative activities of District Offices.

As it was the department’s inaugural ‘classified subject’ filing system, the concept of such was not fully understood and initially all records were consigned to a series 3. The 3/- subseries remained a repository for miscellaneous subjects and housekeeping files throughout the many years that the filing system was used.

Some variation existed between the District Offices and over time certain sub-series were discontinued, new ones created and in some cases reused. The sub-series used by the District Offices differed from the multiple number subject file system adopted by Lands and Survey Head Office.

In approximately 1980, a second sequence of the District Office filing system (series 25569) was created to replace this series although documents continued to be added to the files. Some files were reclassified (i.e. top-numbered) into the second sequence.

On 1 April 1987 the Department of Conservation inherited the responsibility for national parks and reserves from the Department of Lands and Survey, and took over some of the records from this series. These records were held by the Hawke's Bay (1987-1997), East Coast Hawke's Bay (1997-2009), and Wellington Hawke's Bay (2009-2013) Conservancy Offices.

In 1915 a multiple number subject filing system was introduced for all District Offices of the Department of Lands and Survey. This series constitutes the file system used to document the Gisborne land district.

The series includes files of correspondence, reports and occasional papers on administrative and functional activities and includes Land Tenure files created for the Land District.

The series follows on from earlier Survey [S] and Crown Land [CL] series that presumably were created by Survey and Lands before they were joined in c.1890. It could just as easily be regarded as two distinct series, or even more, as the land tenure files series form such a large and different group within it. However, it was decided at the time of the disestablishment of Lands and Survey to regard all the records as belonging to one large series dealing not only with the land tenure information, but all other functional and administrative subjects.

For all intents and purposes, the system was regarded as a single entity by the controlling agency and there were long runs of ''case file" type records within both the numeric and alpha-numeric parts of the system.

As it was the department’s inaugural ‘classified subject’ filing system, the concept of such was not fully understood and initially all records were consigned to a series 3. The 3/- subseries remained a repository for miscellaneous subjects and housekeeping files throughout the many years that the filing system was used.

Some variation existed between the District Offices and over time certain sub-series were discontinued, new ones created and in some cases reused. The sub-series used by the District Offices differed from the multiple number subject file system adopted by Lands and Survey Head Office.

In approximately 1980, a second sequence of the District Office filing system (series 5778) was created to replace this series although documents continued to be added to the files. Some files were reclassified (i.e. top-numbered) into the second sequence.

When the Department of Lands and Survey were disestablished in 1987 files and functions were transferred to three new agencies - the Department of Conservation, Landcorp and the Department of Survey and Land Information (DOSLI). All of these agencies continued to add and create content to the files they inherited from this records series.

In 1996, Knight Frank (NZ) Ltd (a private company that later became part of the CDL Investments Group) acquired Landcorp Property Ltd (the property services subsidiary of Landcorp) together with its district and branch offices network. The Landcorp controlled records from this series were transferred to Knight Frank's Napier office where this office continued to process land tenure files as well keeping other land related registered files. In 2000 control of these records was transferred to Landcorp Investments Ltd, Head Office [ACGQ] in Wellington.

The records controlled by DOSLI were subsequently taken over by Land Information New Zealand and Terralink when DOSLI was dis-established in 1996.

On 1 April 1987 the Department of Conservation inherited the responsibility for national parks and reserves from the Department of Lands and Survey, and took over some of the records from this series. The East Coast (1987-1997), East Coast Hawke's Bay (1997-2009), and East Coast Bay of Plenty (2009-2013) Conservancy Offices continued to add documents to the files in this series until approximately 2008.