Tracing your family history? Awesome! What you’re doing is a form of archival research. Archival research means you’re looking for information and evidence in archives. What’s an archive? Just a collection created to preserve certain types of objects. For example, a record office is an archive the keeps birth, marriage and death certificates, while a local history centre is an archive that keeps letters, photos, documents and books relating to its town’s history. Even a library is a form of archive – it collects and preserves books.

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