Know Your Archives Websites

Have you ever talked with a genealogy buddy about an archives website that you both love… and 3 minutes into the conversation you realize you’re talking about two different websites? There are some websites that have similar names or URLs and it can be confusing. Here’s a handy guide to help you sort out which archives site is which. 

Know Your Archives Websites

archives.gov: National Archives and Records Administration (U.S.)

This is the agency that houses all those cool records from the Federal government, like Civil War pension files.

Not to be confused with:

nationalarchives.gov.uk: The National Archives (U.K.)

This is the agency that houses all those cool government records in the UK.

Then there’s:

archive.org: Internet Archive

The Wayback Machine, digitized books, and a gazillion other neat things. They are a non-profit organization, not a government agency. (Note: there’s no S in their URL.)

And finally…

archives.com: Archives

Archives is a subscription website which started in 2009 and purchased by Ancestry in 2012.

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Posted: January 26, 2016.

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