page_title: The National Archives (United Kingdom)
section_title: Access to documents
hierarchical_section_title: The National Archives (United Kingdom) / Collections / Access to documents
caption_attribution_description: English: A researching inspecting a volume of Admiralty documents from the 1919 time period at The National Archives, Kew. Foam wedges are placed underneath the volume to prevent its binding from cracking.
context_page_description: The National Archives is a non-ministerial government department. Its parent department is the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is the official archive of the UK government and for England and Wales; and "guardian of some of the nation's most iconic documents, dating back more than 1,000 years." There are separate national archives for Scotland and Northern Ireland.
  TNA was formerly four separate organisations: the Public Record Office, the Historical Manuscripts Commission, the Office of Public Sector Information and Her Majesty's Stationery Office. The Public Record Office still exists as a legal entity, as the enabling legislation has not been modified, and documents held by the institution thus continue to be cited by many scholars as part of the PRO. Since 2008, TNA has also hosted the former UK Statute Law Database, now known as legislation.gov.uk.
  It is institutional policy to include the definite article, with an initial capital letter, in its name but this practice is not always followed in the non-specialist media.
context_section_description: The collections held by the National Archives can be searched using their online catalogue.
  Entrance to The National Archives is free. Anybody aged 16 or over can access the original documents at the Kew site, after producing two acceptable proofs of identity and being issued a free reader's ticket.
  The reading room has terminals from which documents can be ordered up from secure storage areas by their reference number. The reference number is composed of three sections: the department code of up to four letters, such as WO for the War Office; a series or class number, for the "subcategory" or collection that the document comes from; and an individual document number. Documents can also be ordered in advance.
  Once a document has been ordered, The National Archives aims to get it to the reader within 45 minutes (assuming it is kept at Kew rather than at their second repository, "Deep Store" – a former salt mine in Cheshire: it can take 2–3 days for files to be retrieved from the latter). Special arrangements are in place for readers wishing to retrieve large groups of files.
  A reader's ticket is not needed to access records on microform or online. Frequently accessed documents such as the Abdication Papers have been put on microfilm, as have records for two million First World War soldiers. The originals of the latter were stored in a warehouse in London along with four million others, but incendiary bombs dropped on the warehouse in the Second World War started a fire in which most were destroyed. The surviving third were largely water or fire-damaged and thus acquired the colloquial name of the "Burnt Documents." Because they were mostly too fragile for public access, they were put on microfilm with the aid of the Heritage Lottery Fund. They have now also been digitised and are available on the Ancestry website.
  Some of the most popular documents have now been digitised and are available to download from Discovery, for a fee of £3.50 per file, 
  or through co-branded services called licensed Internet associates (LIA) as pay per view or part of their subscription service.
  A list of records online is available under the  records, catalogues and online records menu on The National Archives' website.
  All of the open census records have been digitised, and there are also significant other sources online, such as wills proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1383–1858. Researchers are  encouraged to check the online services first, to see if they can get what they want online. If a document is available online, The National Archives' policy is to encourage people to use the digital copy and not the original, even if they come to Kew, in order to protect the original from damage.
caption: Researcher's point of view: Document open at assigned table, with foam supports to prevent binding from breaking
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