This resulted in the construction of a new building housing a Search Room, eight ( 8 ) strong rooms, a Database Room, and an Audio Visual Room with listening / viewing facilities.
32.
Public search rooms were opened in 1866, but the pressure of wider demand led the authorities to restrict the availability of certain classes of document and to favour visitors who were experienced in dealing with historical material.
33.
The main feature of the building is the lofty fireproof central repository, the Dome, which consists of five tiers of ironwork shelving and galleries and is surrounded on the outside by staff and search rooms on three floors.
34.
A public Search Room was opened, and when in the 1950s the Record Office Technical Committee highlighted the need for repairing the thousands of deposited plans in the Victoria Tower, two craftsmen were recruited specifically for this task.
35.
Former acting prison governor Tony Hawkes who retired in June 2008 after 34 years'service lead the tours of the prison which included a visit to various wings and cells, as well as the search room and segregation unit.
36.
The material held, searchable through the NAS On-Line Catalogue, and accessible ( free of charge to examine ) both in person at NAS search rooms ( after reader pass application procedures ), and in certain circumstances through other methods such as by post includes the following:
37.
*Using the same pattern for a Wiki Users / Editathon session in the Discovery Museum Archives Search room ( above ) a similar event targeting people outside the Archives & Museums Service but interested in it and Wikimedia was held at the same venue and same hours on Monday June 3rd.
38.
The church court records extend to some five million pages of information and the NAS is, at the time of writing ( 2008 ), developing an online access system for large-scale, unindexed historical sources, in parallel to free access in the NAS's public search rooms, known as " virtual volumes ".
39.
The ?9 million new headquarters includes a larger public search room, a reading room with seats for 78 users ( most of which have access to power for laptops ), a wifi cafe, microfilm readers, a self-service digital camera for digital copying, electronic information points, public art integrated into the fabric of the building, lecture theatre facilities, and dedicated exhibition space.
