Members of the UKDFD team will make every effort to identify and date your find, or confirm/amend the details you provide. The time taken will depend on a number of factors, including the difficulty posed by the item itself, the availability of identification team members, and the quality of information provided. Records awaiting validation can be searched for and viewed in exactly the same way as validated records.

Once validated, records are transferred from the 'Records awaiting validation' section of the database to the designated category.

If positive identification (and/or dating) is not possible, despite the efforts of the identification team, records will be placed in the applicable 'Unidentified/undated' category. Records in this category are no longer actively researched unless further information fortuitously becomes available.