Fingerprinting was the basis upon which the first forensic professional organization was formed, the International Association for Identification (IAI), in 1915. The first professional certification program for forensic scientists was established in 1977, the IAI's Certified Latent Print Examiner program, which issued certificates to those meeting stringent criteria and had the power to revoke certification where an individual's performance warranted it. Other forensic disciplines have followed suit and established their own certification programs.

     Before computerization, manual filing systems were used in large fingerprint repositories. Manual classification systems were based on the general ridge patterns of several or all fingers (such as the presence or absence of circular patterns). This allowed the filing and retrieval of paper records in large collections based on friction ridge patterns alone. The most popular systems used the pattern class of each finger to form a key (a number) to assist lookup in a filing system. Classification systems include the Roscher system, the Juan Vucetich system, and the Henry Classification System. 

​