Social media guidelines and safeguarding policy
We use social media to share information about:
the work of the National Library of Scotland,
its locations at George IV Bridge, Kelvin Hall, and Causewayside,
and to invite you to explore our collections, digital services, consultations, news, campaigns and more.
We are committed to creating a safe, polite and honest environment on our social media platforms. We welcome discussion, debate and challenge on our social media platforms. We want you to hold us to account and give our decisions robust scrutiny.
How we interact with others
Support – celebrate achievements and events within the organisation and local communities with reposts with comments or replies to their comments
Communicate – ask questions with general communications to prompt response
Engage – initiate and encourage conversation with and between library users and with other organisations
Customer service
If we consider comments to cause offence to members of the public or National Library of Scotland staff, then we will remove these. If similar comments continue to be posted by the same user, then we will consider blocking that user from commenting on our posts and pages.
We will remove inflammatory, obscene or offensive content and ban or block those users who write comments that are:
defamatory, misleading or false
abusive or threatening – this includes swearing
unnecessarily name library staff or workers
obscene, profane or sexually oriented
discriminatory in any way
promoting illegal activity
promoting individual products or services
the same message posted multiple times, otherwise known as 'spamming’
controversial, irrelevant and off topic messages otherwise known as 'trolling’
yours or anyone else’s personal information e.g. contact details
Hate and harassment
Personal attacks of any kind, or offensive comments that target or disparage any ethnic, racial, age, or religious group, gender, sexual orientation or disability status are prohibited, and may be reported.
Hate and harassment can take the form of criminal or non-criminal behaviour and can include offensive comments or images on social media. We will remove or block any contributions or contributors who post hate-related messages on our accounts. We may also screenshot posts that we consider containing hate or harassment and send these to the police for investigation if required.
Information about reporting hate crime and support that is available can be found on the GOV.UK website.
When we're available
Our social media pages are monitored between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday, except for public holidays. We will do our best to respond to you during these hours, however if you have an urgent query, please email us at commsandmarketing@nls.uk.
Where we operate
We manage multiple social media pages across different platforms. We are on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Letterboxd and YouTube. Our username on Letterboxd is 'National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive'. Our username on everything else is 'National Library of Scotland'.
Questions or concerns
If you have questions about these social media guidelines or if you notice any offensive comments on our social media channels at any time, please send us a private message on Facebook, Bluesky or Instagram, or email us at commsandmarketing@nls.uk.