The series contains records of President Preston's briefings and talking points for meetings with Government leaders and representatives of member countries, background information on the country, country strategy papers, and internal memoranda. A few files contain items from the Conable Presidency. Many of the records in the files are memoranda and correspondence of the Managing Directors; however, the records were maintained as the record set of country files for the Office of the President.

The files cover only the first three years of the Preston term. Files on countries during the last part of the Preston years are found in the records of Matthew F. McHugh, who was appointed Counselor to the President in 1993. McHugh remained in the President's office for the first term of the Wolfensohn Presidency and he continued to use and file into the country files he maintained; these records are part of the Wolfensohn Presidential records.