The Friends of The National Archives is a voluntary organisation dedicated to supporting our role in preserving and providing access to the nation’s records.
Established in 1988, and incorporated in 2020, The Friends of The National Archives CIO is a registered charity with over 870 members. Members hold annual elections to a council that manages the Friends’ activities.
The Friends aim to:
- promote and assist the work of The National Archives through fundraising and practical support
- educate the public in the knowledge of public and other records
The organisation provides vital help to The National Archives with many projects, enabling records of all kinds and classes to be conserved, preserved, catalogued, calendarised, indexed, made accessible and studied. It does this through providing grants to support projects, as well as getting involved in volunteering.
The Friends have part-funded conferences and seminars at The National Archives and offered financial support to staff travelling to represent The National Archives at external conferences and events.
They also organise and host events at The National Archives, and sometimes in conjunction with other bodies such as the Friends of The Keep Archive (FoTKA) and The Friends of West Sussex Record Office (WSAS).
The Friends’ magazine Magna is published once or twice a year and includes a range of interesting articles based upon the records held at The National Archives and elsewhere.
The FTNA Newsletter is sent periodically to members with information on events, news and snippets of interest.
Volunteering at The National Archives
Many Friends are volunteers, traditionally working on cataloguing projects with The National Archives’ records specialists.
In 2011, Friends volunteers completed a lengthy cataloguing project, which began in 1992, to index British Army Other Ranks Discharge Documents up to 1854. These documents were held in classes WO 97 (for the Chelsea Establishment), WO 119 (for the Irish Kilmainham Establishment) and WO 121 (pension correspondence), and resulted in the addition of more than 20,000 soldiers’ records to our catalogue.
In 2013 the volunteers finished another military project, to index various sections of WO 69, the records of the Royal Artillery. They are currently focussed on a naval project, to make accessible and improve our understanding of Navy Board miscellaneous correspondence for 1673 to 1832 held by The National Archives in the record series ADM 106.
Read more about volunteering at The National Archives.