Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to request information from the National Archives
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Many of the items listed in the catalogue[1] have the following
text in the "Closure status" field:

"Closed Or Retained Document, Open Description"

Please can you provide me with an extract from the catalogue which
contains only those items which have the above text in the closure
status field ("closed files"). See AN 18/683 for an example of a
closed file.

I would be most grateful if you could provide the extract in CSV
(comma separated value) format.

I would expect that the extract would at the very least include the
name and catalogue reference, scope and content and covering dates
of the file. I would like the extract to contain all the
information about each closed file that can already be seen by the
public in the online catalogue.

[1] http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catal...

I am aware of the exemption under Section 21 of the Act for
"information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant by
other means".

I accept that a large enough group of people with enough time could
theoretically visit every catalogue reference page and create the
extract. I do not however consider that this makes the information
"reasonably accessible" to me.

Thank you for your help

Yours faithfully,

John Cross

Dear John Cross,

I am sorry that we have not responded earlier, but the request was sent to another part of the organisation. We are trying to find a way for you to down load in the format that you require and will get back to you shortly

Yours sincerely

Vivienne Bales
Remote Services

If you would like to contact us again regarding
this request, please contact the helpdesk:

via e-mail: By replying to this e-mail
or (020 8876 3444)
Remember to quote your call reference number: F0020550 in any
correspondence, as this will assist us in providing you with a
quick response.

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to.

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Dear Vivienne,

Thank you very much for your email. I really appreciate the fact
that you are trying to find a way to help me access the
information. I wish that the rest of the public sector would follow
the example set by the National Archives in making information
available to the public.

thank you again,

John

John Cross

Dear John Cross,

I am sorry, but I am afraid that we are unable to help you. We have attempted to find an easy way to do this for you, or for you to be able to do it for yourself, but the volume is too large. There are 200,000 closed records in our catalogue. The only suggestion that we can make is that you go through each letter code with this search strategy. However, for some series, there are more than 3000 in some letter codes, so you may need to change step 2 to series. You should not need to do this for closed documents, with closed descriptions, as there are far fewer of these.

1. From the Catalogue search screen at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catal...

Click on ‘Show advanced options’ and on the ‘Advanced Search’ tab. This direct link should also work:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catal...

2 From the Advanced Search screen, tick both the boxes for piece and item.

3. Type a department code or series reference in the box provided. For example, type CAB (for Cabinet records).

4. Scroll down for the ‘Closure status’ field and select the option ‘closed or retained document, open description’

5. Scroll down and click on the Search button

6. From the list of results you can click on Download results to obtain a spreadsheet or HTML table for printing.

7. Run the same search for records whose closure status is ‘closed or retained document, closed description’

The good news is that when you do each of these searches, you can download the results in a csv format by just clicking on download results and chosing that format.

Good luck with your research

Yours sincerely]
Vivienne Bales
Remote Services

If you would like to contact us again regarding
this request, please contact the helpdesk:

via e-mail: By replying to this e-mail
or (020 8876 3444)
Remember to quote your call reference number: F0020550 in any
correspondence, as this will assist us in providing you with a
quick response.

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to.

show quoted sections