What we share and how we moderate comments on our social media channels.
Channels
You can find us across social media:
You can also follow our specialist Twitter accounts:
- @UKNatArcMedia is the official feed of The National Archives’ media team
- @UKNatArcSector tweets information and news relevant to our leadership role within the archive sector
- @UKNatArcRes tweets research news and insights from our records specialists
- @UKNatArcEdu tweets links to our educational resources and information about taught sessions, from KS1 to ‘A’ Level
- @Legislation is the official account for legislation.gov.uk, the home of UK statute law from 1267 to the present. It tweets about updates to published HM Government legislation, and other relevant news and information
And on Facebook:
- The National Archives Education Service is a community page aimed at children, teachers and parents interested in using The National Archives’ education resources
On our website, we also maintain:
- a live chat service where you can ask our record specialists about your research or records-related queries. Live chat requires cookies
- The National Archives’ blog features contributors from across The National Archives, posting about their work and the wider archives sector
- Archives Media Player where you can find, play and download all of our audio and video podcasts. You can add comments and star ratings to individual podcasts
Availability
Our social media accounts are monitored and updated during office hours, Monday to Friday.
Third-party sites may occasionally be unavailable. We accept no responsibility for lack of service due to downtime.
Confidentiality and security
The National Archives is not responsible for and does not endorse the opinions, products or services on these websites. Please remember that any personal information you provide on social media networks will be subject to the individual sites’ privacy statements. Always check how this information could be used as this is outside your own and The National Archives’ control. We will never ask for any personal information from you on these sites.
Messages
We welcome feedback, ideas and discussion from all our followers, and endeavour to join conversations where possible. However, we are not always able to reply individually to all the messages we receive via social media. If you need to contact us for official correspondence, please use one of our contact forms.
We would prefer to receive Freedom of Information requests and data protection requests via our online contact form, or by email or letter, in order to assist us in giving them a full response. However, we note the Information Commissioner’s Office guidance on the validity of social media as a channel for receiving such requests and will handle them in accordance with that guidance.
Any comments made are the author’s opinion alone and do not represent those of The National Archives. Comments will not be edited or censored, but any posts and threads that may cause offence, are about a named individual or use offensive language will be removed.
We reserve the right to block any users who are seen to persistently post offensive comments.
The National Archives is bound by the Civil Service Code, and cannot engage on issues of party politics.
Following
If you follow or subscribe to any of our social media channels, we will not automatically follow you back.
We follow key Twitter users that we think are relevant to our organisation, including other government departments, our stakeholders and third sector, non-profit organisations and our commercial partners. Being followed by The National Archives does not imply endorsement of any kind.
We share content that we feel could be of interest to our users, such as research findings and statistics and any relevant celebrations and commemorations. However, in the interests of commercial propriety and competitiveness we cannot guarantee that we will honour requests from other profit-making organisations, as we would not be able to do so fairly.
Reusing and sharing images
The majority of our images are Crown copyright. Images from the collections of The National Archives posted on the photo-sharing website Flickr may be downloaded and reused without permission in any format for purposes of research, private study or education (non-commercial use) only. See the full rights statement.
To use images for any other purpose you must gain permission from the Image Library, The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU by email. If any images are inadvertently uploaded that are the copyright of a third party we will remove these as soon as this is brought to our attention.
Our full terms and conditions for sharing your own photos on Flickr can be found online. By adding your photo to The National Archives Flickr group you are deemed to have accepted these conditions on Flickr only.