National Archives of Scotland

We visited the National Archives of Scotland . The archive houses Scotland's records and attempts to make them accessible to visitors. The archive runs many different websites. The staff really seems to make efforts to get people into the archive, such as informing people as to how they can get started in doing genealogy research. We were shown a variety of materials which all varied in purpose and content. For example, a book about the sales of pieces of land in a certain county could help someone doing research on a specific person in that it proves that person was in a specific place at a specific time. The archive also has materials relating to politics, including memos and letters which could help those doing research on that topic. The archive also offers classes to help individuals to be able to read old and messy handwriting. They also have many documents which are digitized so that the original can be preserved and the patron can still gain access to the content. I found the variety of materials very interesting, all which could be useful to many different people doing many different types of research.