National Archives drop digital download fees

The National Archives, Kew, London.

The National Archives, Kew, London. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The National Archives have dropped many of their fees for downloading digital scans of documents.

Previously First World War Unit Diaries were something like £7 per download, as were Service Records and Medal Citations. However, now all digital downloads are priced at £3.50 – a significant saving for those of us who have to download quite a few such documents for our research!

It’s a sensible approach that should help generate more historical research, particularly for people who find it hard to get to Kew.

Other documents you can download from the National Archives online include Naval Service Records (pre 1922), Royal Flying Corps and RAF Records 1914-1919, BEF War Diaries, and WW1 Campaign Medal Index Cards.

Now just to sort out institutions charging mortgage-level reproduction fees!

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5 Comments

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5 Responses to National Archives drop digital download fees

  1. John Erickson

    Any idea if those of us outside of England can access those archives? I may actually research some Coldstream Guard history one of these days. (On the other hand, if you ever need info about Royal Navy equipment, there are some great non-government sites over here I can hook you up with.)

    • James Daly

      I don’t see what you can’t John, you log on and it simply asks you for an email address and then payment.

      • John Erickson

        Dude! They had a Vulcan flying at Farnborough, and YOU didn’t cover it? What the heck are you running here, some kind of dang NAVY blog?!? ;)

        • James Daly

          I was actually due to go to Farnborough, but knocked it on the head due to lots of other commitments at the moment and the risk of overstretching myself. And, anyway, theres the inaugural Portsmouth Airshow I thought. Which yesterday was cancelled until 2013! :(

          • John Erickson

            See? The airshow gods are punishing you for hanging around this barnacle-clad bunch of old salts! So no more slacking, okay buddy? Or else I’ll have to send the US Air Force over there to drop a B-52 on your house! (Hey, we got BUFFs to spare. :D )

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