National Archives
Printable version

The social media archive is now fully searchable

Our social media archive is now the first of its kind in the UK to feature a search function, allowing users to easily navigate our growing collection of tweets, Flickr images and YouTube videos from a range of central government departments and arm’s-length bodies. Through newly-designed access pages, users can now carry out keyword searches and filter results by government department, time period and platform.

The project was a collaboration between The National Archives and MirrorWeb which also involved expanding the number of Twitter and YouTube channels and incorporating images from Flickr for the first time.

John Sheridan, Digital Director at The National Archives, said:

“We’re really breaking new ground here, improving public access to an important collection that records the government’s use of social media. As the official archive of government, it is our job to keep and make available the record, whatever form it takes. This social media collection contributes to our understanding of recent events and will be preserved as part of the official public record for generations to come.

“It is important to not only develop new archival practice for what types of records we can preserve, but to improve the ways records can be accessed by the public. With the introduction of the search function, locating relevant social media content in the archive is simpler than ever before.”

The social media archive was launched in 2014 and now has over 877,000 tweets, 119,600 Flickr images and 39,900 YouTube videos. It houses content dating back to 2006 and covers an array of 21st Century milestones including the 2016 EU Referendum and the 2012 London Olympics.

Visit the social media archive here.

 

Channel website: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

Original article link: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/the-social-media-archive-is-now-fully-searchable/

Share this article

Latest News from
National Archives

Spotlight on women at Serco – Anita’s story