It is important to plan ahead before visiting an archive or you may find that you arrive when there are no staff available to help you or that the material you want to consult is unavailable. Some archives hold items in offsite storage and will need notice in order to have them delivered to the reading room and some archives operate timed slots for the retrieval of items. In some cases, access to certain items or even to the archive itself may be restricted.
Visit the archive's webpages to find out
Contact the archive well in advance to arrange your visit as an appointment may be necessary.
It is a good idea to decide what your questions are in advance, but to be prepared to revise your line of questioning in relation to what is held by the archives.
Make sure you take with you a charged laptop and battery or a notebook, a pencil and a form of identification acceptable to the archive.
You should consider how you will read the materials you find in the archive. If you are consulting older items they may be difficult to decipher or written in Latin, and they may use unfamiliar conventions or vocabulary. You may need some knowledge of
The National Archives provide helpful guidance on reading old documents.
Training on digitisation of archival material is available from the Library Research Support team.