You can use our collections either by visiting our reading room in Motherwell or by contacting us by email, phone or letter. In addition, a selection of our records is available online.
Reading Room
- The Archives’ reading room is open to all members of the public free of charge.
- An appointment is not essential, but recommended, and records will be produced on demand if no access restrictions apply.
- If you make an appointment, we can let you know whether we hold the material in which you are interested, carry out preliminary searches for you and have records ready for you when you arrive.
- Resources available at the reading room are: the Archives’ catalogues, a reference library, and public access computers.
External Enquiries and Online Resources
If you cannot come to the reading room you can make your enquiry by post, telephone or e-mail. This is a free service (up to 30 minutes research). After the initial 30 minutes, we can carry out research for a maximum of 2 hours for a fee. Please contact us or see our current list of charges on the right for more details.
You can access our Poor Law records and Electoral registers on Ancestry. You need to be a subscriber or many local libraries, including all North Lanarkshire Libraries, provide access to Ancestry free of charge. You can read a guide to our collections on Ancestry here: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/c/ancestry-blog/making-discoveries-in-the-north-lanarkshire-poor-law-records/
Poor Law records can be accessed here:
Electoral registers can be accessed here:
Visit our Flickr Gallery https://www.flickr.com/photos/nl_heritage/albums for a selection of historical photographs from or collections including, of Cumbernauld New Town, Albion Rovers Football Club, Airdrie, Industries and the High Street.
In addition, many items from our archives collections can be viewed on the CultureNL Museum website: https://www.culturenlmuseums.co.uk/
Reprographics
Many of our collection items can be copied, copyright and condition of the record permitting. We allow self-service photography without flash for reference purposes in the reading room, and you can order high quality scans, photographic reprints or print outs. Our list of charges is available in the download section.
