Online archiving is a relatively new way of storing information that has revolutionized the way we store and keep information. These online archives are much easier to access than normal archives as you can access them as long as you have an internet connection. Many of these, such as the Darwin Correspondence project and the Medici archives are free to the public. But sites such as ancestry are online archives that you have to pay for in order to access.
The first online archive we used in class was the Darwin Correspondence project. This archive was constructed by the University of Cambridge which is an archive of Charles Darwin’s research along with documentation of his personal life. This site is very easy to navigate and you can find so many of the letters he wrote and received in his life.
Another one of the sites we visited was the Medici Archive Projects which covers across Europe and contains many sources from the 16th century forward. The site is not organized as nicely as the other websites as it’s a lot of text and not as many visuals and the page layout isn’t as appealing as the other online archives we looked at as it extremely cluttered and not very straightforward.
The final online archive we looked at was ancestry.ca which is the only one we looked at that required payment to get the experience of the website. The cost of membership with ancestry varied from around $20-$30 a month to find out about your family tree which wasn’t even necessarily correct information about your family’s past. They also had a DNA test service for $130 which tracks down your genetic origins. I personally think this archive is a complete rip off and not worth the cost to find out the information ancestry has about your background.
Overall, I think that online archiving is the way of the future and are a much safer alternative to preserving history than traditional archives are.
HIST2P26 