national archives
Federal document vault
A national archives is a government institution that preserves and maintains historically significant documents, records, and materials of a nation.
These repositories house everything from founding documents and treaties to census records and presidential papers.
In the United States, the National Archives holds the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights: Researchers spent weeks at the national archives tracing immigration records.
- documentsFormal written records
- classified documentsFiles with access restrictions
- accessionsItems added to collection
- collectionsGathered groups of items
- catalogsComprehensive itemized lists
records · declassification · manuscripts · digitization · holdings · oral histories · family history · collective memory · libraries · government agency · repositories · preservation · microfilm · federal · historical manuscripts · papers · paper trail · founding fathers
- History MuseumsSmithsonian, British Museum, Louvre, natural history museums, war museums
- public propertypublic land, public park, public lands, state property, public library
- recordsbirth records, world record, record, Guinness, documents
- archivesarchivist, collections, repositories, archival records, records
- Canadian genealogyancestors, ancestry, descendants, family history, family tree
- Cultural Policyarts funding, arts council, arts councils, heritage preservation, cultural institutions
national archivesprivate collection
Items owned, not exhibited
personal papers · family records · private collections · local archives · city archives
national archivesmemory hole
Device for erasing history
book burning · document shredding · incinerator · cover-up · whitewashing
nation, national, archive, nationalism, international, archives, multinational, nationalist, nationalize