Search room user guide

BT Group Archives is only open to pre-booked visits on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Please contact archives@bt.com to reserve your place - spaces are limited so please book as early as you can. Note that we sometimes need to schedule closures on certain dates.

We open between 10:00 and 16:00 with a closure for lunch between 12:30-13:30.

• Let us know you've arrived using the BT Group Archives button on the intercom outside the building. We will come and collect you
• Have your photographic and address identification ready
• Before starting your research we'll ask you to complete a short visitor record form

Our research material is broadly divided into three categories; the telecommunications reference library (printed sources), Archives (original source documents) and visual media (photographs, films and videos).

Journals, reference books and other printed sources can be searched using our online catalogue.

Documents open for public inspection are searchable in our online catalogue.

Not all our photographs and films are catalogued and online. However, our two primary photographic series are available in our online catalogue and a large selection of films, dating from the 1930s to 2010, can be viewed in our  film archive.

We recommend that you search our online catalogue and send us a list of items you would like to request ahead of your visit. 

We have two retrieval slots per day, one in the morning and one afternoon.

You can order a maximum of 10 items in the morning and 10 in the afternoon.

Orders for the morning must be placed by 12:00 the day before your appointment by emailing archives@bt.com.

Orders for the afternoon must be made by 11:30 on the day.

If it’s your first visit and you’d like some help using the catalogue to select what you want, then just let us know. We’ll help you when you arrive, and you don’t need to place your order the day before.

Our documents are mostly unique and irreplaceable. To make sure they survive for future researchers we ask you to follow these guidelines:

• Do use the free lockers to secure your belongings
• Do only use pencil to make notes
• Do feel free to take photographs for personal research purposes, but no flash please.
• Do return documents and files in the exact order they were produced
• Do use the available support cushions for large books or for volumes with weak spines
• Don't eat or drink in the search room
• Don't mark the documents in any way
• Don't lean on documents or open volumes, or rest on them to write notes
• Don't stack open volumes on top of each another
• Don't attempt to take documents out of the search room

• Our documents are available on condition that no reproduction or publishing is done without our permission.
• You can do your own photography at our discretion and subject to copyright restrictions. We'll give you a form to complete before starting any photography.