The Archives will be closed on Saturday, April 27th for the Spring Electrical Shutdown. Research Room Rules Directions and Parking. For more information. Archives West provides access to descriptions of primary sources in the western United States, including correspondence, diaries, or photographs.

Shelved record boxes of an archive. An archive is an accumulation of or the physical place they are located. Archives contain documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of that person or organization. Professional and historians generally understand archives to be records that have been naturally and necessarily generated as a product of regular legal, commercial, administrative, or social activities. They have been metaphorically defined as 'the secretions of an organism', and are distinguished from documents that have been consciously written or created to communicate a particular message to posterity. In general, archives consist of records that have been selected for permanent or long-term preservation on grounds of their enduring cultural, historical, or evidentiary value. Archival records are normally unpublished and almost always unique, unlike books or magazines for which many identical copies exist.

This means that archives are quite distinct from libraries with regard to their functions and organization, although archival collections can often be found within library buildings. A person who works in archives is called an.

The study and practice of organizing, preserving, and providing access to information and materials in archives is called. The physical place of storage can be referred to as an archive (more usual in the ), an archives (more usual in the ), or a repository. When referring to historical records or the places they are kept, the plural form archives is chiefly used. The computing use of the term 'archive' should not be confused with the record-keeping meaning of the term. Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Etymology [ ] First attested in English in early 17th century, the word archive is derived from the French archives (plural), in turn from archīum or archīvum, which is the form of the ἀρχεῖον ( archeion), ',, residence, or office of chief ', itself from ἀρχή ( arkhē), amongst others 'magistracy, office, government' (compare an-archy, mon-archy), which comes from the verb ἄρχω ( arkhō), 'to begin, rule, govern'.

The word originally developed from the Greek ἀρχεῖον (arkheion), which refers to the home or dwelling of the, in which important official state documents were filed and interpreted under the authority of the Archon. The adjective formed from archive is archival. History [ ] The practice of keeping official documents is very old. Archaeologists have discovered archives of hundreds (and sometime thousands) of clay tablets going back to the third and second millennia BC in sites like,,,,,.

These discoveries have been fundamental to know ancient alphabets, languages, literature, and politics. Archives were well developed by the ancient Chinese, the ancient Greeks, and ancient Romans (who called them ). However, they have been lost, since documents written on materials like and paper deteriorated at a faster pace, unlike their stone tablet counterparts. Archives of churches, kingdoms, and cities from the Middle Ages survive and have often kept their official status uninterruptedly until now.

They are the basic tool for historical research on these ages. England after 1066 developed archives and archival research methods.

The Swiss developed archival systems after 1450. Lets speak english together quotes. Modern archival thinking has many roots from the French Revolution.

The, who possess perhaps the largest archival collection in the world, with records going as far back as 625 A.D., were created in 1790 during the from various government, religious, and private archives seized by the revolutionaries. Users and institutions [ ].

Reading room of the (Austrian State Archive), in the Erdberg district of Vienna (2006) Historians,, lawyers,, filmmakers, and others conduct research at archives. The research process at each archive is unique, and depends upon the institution that houses the archive. While there are many kinds of archives, the most recent census of archivists in the United States identifies five major types: academic, business (for profit), government, non-profit, and other. There are also four main areas of inquiry involved with archives: material technologies, organizing principles, geographic locations, and tangled embodiments of humans and non-humans.