From the National Archives in England (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk):
We can confirm that our reading room services will resume from Tuesday 8 December, in line with the new local restriction tier system.
All visitors must continue to book their visit and order their documents in advance. We will be offering greater capacity in our reading rooms, with more documents per visitor and a greater choice of bookable dates, including Saturdays.
We will open reading room bookings on Tuesday 1 December at 12:00 (midday). As our services have been suspended for a four-week period we are expecting increased demand, and so we will be making bookings available for the period of Tuesday 8 December to Saturday 2 January (inclusive), excluding Christmas and New Year closure dates.
We want to give as many people the chance to access records as possible, and in consideration of this we will initially be asking visitors to book no more than two visits in this period. Bookings for subsequent dates will be released on a more regular basis soon.
We were forced to cancel the bookings of a number of visitors earlier this month, when national restrictions came into effect. We will be contacting these visitors directly to ensure that they are able to re-book their visit before we make bookings more widely available, and will be re-opening our reading rooms for some of these visitors on 3 and 4 December.
Before planning a visit, we would encourage visitors to refer to government guidance relating to local COVID alert levels and how travel restrictions might affect your visit – this applies to any areas you might need to travel through, as well as the areas you are travelling to and from. From 2 December, The National Archives is located within a High alert area (tier 2).
All of these arrangements are subject to change at short notice, due to factors outside our control. Please check our website or social media for further updates.
(Original story at https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/coronavirus-update/)
Comment: Meanwhile, in Scotland...
As announced earlier (https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2020/11/national-records-of-scotland-issues.html), the National Records of Scotland, the only UK based national archive to have remained closed throughout the pandemic, has stated that it hopes to trial some limited re-opening early next year. This is a welcome move, but it does once again flag up how behind we are the rest of the UK in terms of a functioning national archive provision.
I have long stated that whilst the staff at the NRS do a great job - and they are currently working like troopers in the pandemic - the building itself is not fit for purpose, something the archive itself conceded with its estates review some six years ago now (see http://britishgenes.blogspot.com/2014/07/comparing-uks-three-national-archives.html). It's a pretty building, well located, but its sheer impracticability is its greatness weakness - too much is stored offsite, that which is onsite is not secure (see http://britishgenes.blogspot.com/2019/07/shock-as-national-records-of-scotland.html), and in the current pandemic, its very design is proving to be a blockage to access, with inadequate ventilation and ability to control the flow of people to minimise the risks from coranavirus. And as can be seen with the recent move by the Edinburgh based NLS to open a facility in Glasgow also, the idea that our national archive should even be completely Edinburgh based in an increasingly digital era is something I personally think should also be thrown into the mix for consideration.
Rome was not built in a day, but the idea of Rome was a first step. Once the pandemic is over - and absolutely the pandemic must remain the current priority - we may not be in a position to secure a new purpose built facility in the immediate term, but as an aspiration it must come back onto the agenda.
Chris
Pre-order my next book, Sharing Your Family History Online, at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. My book Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.
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