In the course of daily life, individuals and organizations create and keep information about their personal and business activities. Archivists identify and preserve portions of this recorded information that have lasting value. Archival records take many forms, including correspondence, diaries, financial and legal documents, photographs, and sound recordings.
Archives provide firsthand information about the past.
They are valuable to museum researchers, scholars, students, journalists, lawyers, and others who want to know about people, places, and events in the past. Archives in the Museum of American History supply information to staff and other researchers about the artifacts the Museum collects and the historical themes that it studies and interprets. This information reaches broader audiences through exhibitions and publications. All state governments, and many local governments, universities, businesses, libraries, and historical societies, maintain archives. More than 4,500 are listed in the National Historical Publications and Records Commission's Directory of Archives and Manuscript Repositories in the United States , Second Edition, 1988.