What's an Archives?

An archives is a place where people can go to gather firsthand facts, data, and evidence from letters, reports, notes, memos, photographs, and other primary sources. The National Archives is the U.S. Government’s collection of documents that records important events in American history. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the Government agency that preserves and maintains these materials and makes them available for research. Whether or not you realize it, you probably have an archives in your home. It might be in a filing cabinet in your study, a box in the basement, a chest in the attic. It is your personal archives: a collection of material that records important events from your family’s history. Both a family’s archives and the nation’s archives save items to serve as proof that an event occurred;explain how something happened, whether for personal, financial, or sentimental reasons;may be located in more than one place.There are ways that your family archiv...