Online archives are a great way of storing information, this is because they are good for curation, maintenance, space, resources, and preservation. They are used in today’s society for many different ways of accessing information about a certain topic or person and they make it easy to locate research. An example of online archives would be the Darwin Correspondence project and Medici archives. These sites allow anyone to access a numerous number of documents from the past for free. The Darwin Correspondence was built by the University of Cambridge and it consists of many letters written by and given to Charles Darwin. This archive is fascinating because it possesses personal information about Darwin and also has access to the research done by and on him.
Not all archives are free, an example is one that is used to personally track down past research and information in an individual’s life. This website is known as Ancestry.ca and it is an online archive that stores information about people’s pasts and ancestors. This allows people to get a sense of belonging and makes them feel as if they are learning and becoming a part of their heritage. Even though the website is used by many people, in my opinion, it is a waste of money and should be free. This archive charges up to thirty dollars a month for its services and is known for giving false information of people’s pasts. It is an unreliable source that tries to persuade people in paying for information that may not even belong to them.
Another example of an archive that is older is the Medici Archive Project. This archive holds information on Tuscany and Europe and contains millions of letters from the years 1537-1743. It may be a bit trickier to navigate to different sources on this site because it contains so much information. However, it is still very interesting as to how thousands of past documents can be stored in one area without the worry of destruction and being damaged or lost.
Overall archives are a very useful tool when it comes to organizing documents especially ones from the past. They are very handy to historians who have to research thousands of documents about a certain topic. They give them access to information from any time and place at just the click of a button.
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