Reading Room Security

One of the most important principles of archives is the concept of authenticity. The archivist has to guarantee unbroken custody of his/her holdings and thus assure users that the documents are original untempered ones. For this reason the following measures are often taken in archival reading rooms: -

• Bags, briefcases etc. are to be left out of the reading room and only items like pencils, and notepaper or laptops are allowed in the reading room.
• Any person wishing to conduct research requires a method of identification and a researcher register is to be signed. Signing the register of readers will imply an agreement to observe the reading room regulations. In more automated environments, the whole process is done by means of scanning readers' tickets.
• Most reading rooms have restrictions on the number of items a reader can have at a time. In case of the National Archives of Malta this is limited to three items at a time. This makes the control on the movement of documents more possible.