The concept puts images at the forefront, emphasizing how records are related and how, when put together, they tell a surprising, informative, and important story.

Web 2.0 technology allows users to search the database both by keywords and tags. It enables visitors to customize their exhibit experience by collecting images and creating posters, movies, and games that can be shared by email.

This latest exhibit at the National Archives, part of what is called the National Archives Experience, was not contained within its stone walls but in the bits and bytes of cyberspace. Unlike a typical online exhibit, the new Digital Vaults is more than the digitization of a physical display, it is an entirely new environment that allows visitors to create their own collections, games, posters, movies, and more based on the primary sources we hold.

It combines interactive elements and thousands of primary sources from the holdings of the Archives, and invites visitors to explore not only well-known people and historic turning points but also little known players and events that provide surprising perspectives and insights.

A wonderful exploratory interface on top of a sophisticated application. Great functionality and highly approachable.

You can get lost here for hours—dusty, old documents have never looked so good.

Scout staffers fell in love with this site the instant we found it. We couldn’t help but spend valuable time shuffling records to see what we could find and then collect our favorites into our own profile. We created our own pathways and marveled at the digital access we were granted. The site is well developed and designed, easy to use, and provides a plethora of valuable memorabilia and historical documents that could easily be used in the classroom or to create a fun and interesting homework assignment. This site was a shoe-in as one of our favorites for the academic year.