Plan Your Research Visit (2024)

FAQs

How to do research in the National Archive? ›

Our research rooms are open to the public. Each of our locations holds different groups of records. To make the most efficient use of your time, please write, telephone, or e-mail us in advance to make sure that the documents or the microfilm you want to see are at the location you plan to visit.

Who can use the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)? Anyone can use the National Archives.

We recommend that you allow at least 90 minutes to visit the exhibit galleries.

An archives is a place where people can go to gather firsthand facts, data, and evidence from letters, reports, notes, memos, photographs, and other primary sources.

We develop the information that we disseminate from reliable sources and use generally accepted methods for data collection, archival description, and editorial preparation. We thoroughly review information before we disseminate it.

Yes! Non-flash photography is encouraged in all public areas of the National Archives Museum unless otherwise posted. We encourage you to share your photographs online and tag us @USNatArchives. Find facsimiles in the Archives Store in the museum or online.

Entry to the National Archives museum is free.

Reservations are not required for individuals or groups wishing to visit the National Archives Museum, but they are strongly suggested between March and Labor Day to avoid potentially long lines outside.

If you love history, you'll enjoy visiting this museum. A treasure trove of the United States' founding documents, the National Archives Museum is high on travelers' to-do lists and almost always has long entrance lines.

The National Archives preserves and provides access to the records of the Federal Government. Here is a sample of these records, from our most celebrated milestones to little-known surprises .

The Public Records Act requires central government departments, and certain other public bodies, to identify records of historical value and transfer them for permanent preservation to The National Archives, or to another appointed place of deposit, by the time they are 30 years old.

Is there a bathroom at the National Archives? ›

There are wheelchair accessible toilets on all floors of The National Archives. All of our accessible toilets have level access, some from the lift.

Every year, nearly a million visitors from around the world come to the historic Rotunda of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., home of the Charters of Freedom; thousands more research their nation's history or their own in our nearby research areas.

The French National Archives, which possess perhaps the largest archival collection in the world (with records going as far back as 625 A.D.), was created in 1790 during the Revolution from various government, religious, and private archives seized by the revolutionaries.

The oldest known example of a collection consisting primarily of written literary works (poetry, stories, travelogues, etc.) is the Library of Ashurbanipal, assembled at Nineveh (in present-day Iraq) by Ashurbanipal (688-631 BCE), king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Archives are used by students, researchers, novelists, artists, filmmakers, journalists, architects, among others!

You'll usually need a degree and postgraduate training to do this job. Most degree subjects are accepted for postgraduate study, but you may find it useful to take a degree like: history. museum studies.

Go to the Catalog main page at: www.archives.gov/research/catalog/. Conduct a search for the records of interest to you. You can search by keyword, National Archives Identifier (NAID), or type of archival material.