The National Archives holds records that the public can access

for their research interests.

This often includes family history and academic research.

Records arrive at The National Archives, prepared and packaged

by the government department transferring them.

We assign the records a temporary storage location.

The record listings and conditions of the records are checked.

Records are then processed

and moved into our environmentally controlled repositories,

where they are given a permanent storage location.

Our online catalogue, Discovery, is updated

using information from our cataloguing template,

which is prepared by the government department.

Each record has a unique catalogue reference.

This helps our staff to locate the record

when it is requested by a researcher in our reading rooms.

That’s why we ask that records are catalogued in a specific way.

Records can be requested by the public, our staff,

and other government departments.

They can be searched by organisation, date range, key words or former reference number.

When a record is ordered by a researcher,

the request is processed and the record begins its journey to our reading rooms.

This is where researchers view the records that we hold.

The researcher can then collect their record in the reading rooms.

Researchers will interact with records in different ways.

Some will simply read the record, while others will take notes on a laptop or notebook

and some will also photograph or make copies of the record.

This is why we ask for records to be physically prepared in a certain way,

to ensure ongoing accessibility

and to allow the public to use the records without causing damage.

Researchers can also order copies of records;

these are scanned by our Record Copying team.

Records are also used as education resources by school, college and university students.

The records we store have a wide variety of format types and different users.

These users sometimes come across issues using records

because of incorrect physical preparation.

Some issues are minor; others are more serious.

Some records are held together by tags which are too short.

This causes the tag hole to tear over time

which can result in pages becoming separated from the parent record and possibly lost.

Other records can become unreadable due to poor physical preparation.

This can prevent people from accessing the record.

For instance, the ink on thermal paper can fade and disappear.

We ask for thermal paper to be photocopied, so that information is not lost.

Incorrect preparation can lead to the records not being accessible to the public

because of the increased chance of damage.

Staff at the reading room counters and in Collection Care,

are available to assist when records aren’t easily accessible.

Once the researcher has finished with the records,

they are sent from the reading rooms back to our repositories.

They are put back in the same location, ready to be ordered again.

Physically preparing and cataloguing records to The National Archives’ standard

ensures that records are readily accessible and safely stored.