What Is Archives Month?

American Archives Month is a collaborative effort by professional organizations and repositories around the nation to highlight the importance of records of enduring value. Archivists are professionals who assess, collect, organize, preserve, maintain control of, and provide access to information that has lasting value, and they help people find and understand the information they need in those records.

For Utah’s Archives Month, the members of USHRAB choose an annual theme and encourage cultural heritage institutions to join in by posting records held in their collections.

What is an Archives?

An archives is a place where people go to find information. But rather than gathering information from books as you would in a library, people who do research in archives often gather firsthand facts, data, and evidence from letters, reports, notes, memos, photographs, audio and video recordings, and other primary sources.

What is an Archivist?

Archivists are professionals trained to pre-
serve original materials including paper documents, books, photos, maps, films, and digital records. They appraise, organ-
ize, preserve, protect, and provide access to records that have lasting value, and
they help people find and understand the
information in those materials.

Are there different types of archives?

Archives come in all shapes and sizes. There are national archives, state archives, city archives, community archives, business archives, church archives, and more. There are archives for different types of government records, and also archives that contain the personal records of people and organizations. There are archives that contain the personal papers of famous leaders (for example, Martin Luther King, Jr), authors (for example, Maya Angelou and Ernest Hemingway), scientists (for example, Albert Einstein and Marie Curie), performers, religious and business leaders, social activists, and more!