Before your visit to our Historical Search Room you should explore the NRS online public catalogue to look for records that are relevant to your research.
There are different ways to access our records, and you’ll need to request some records at least 3 working days in advance.
To begin searching for a record:
- Open the National Records of Scotland online public catalogue.
- Select ‘Search’ from the navigation bar. This will open the ‘Search catalogue records’ screen.
In the ‘Search catalogue records’ screen you can:
- add relevant search terms in the ‘Search for’ field
- enter a full or partial reference number (if known)
- specify the period of interest in the ‘date’ fields
Completing more fields will narrow your search. You can also leave fields blank if you prefer to see more results.
The catalogue will always search exactly what you type. Consider which words are relevant to your research and if there are alternative spellings. The spelling of place or family names may have changed over time.
You can edit the type of search. For example, if you search for “John Smith” you can find different results depending on the type of search:
- ‘Phrase’ would show entries where “John” and “Smith” appear together
- ‘All words’ would show entries that contain the words “John” and “Smith”, but these may be separated by other words
- ‘Any words (Or)’ would show entries that contain either the words “John” or “Smith”
