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Deed of Land for town lot in Amherstburg from
Douglas Terry, Photographer to
Lovedy Ann Campeau, 1894
Land Records Collection; file, Amherstburg,
Essex Co., 1853-1916;
Reference Code: F 603, MU1688.
Archives of Ontario

Archives are mainly made up of ‘primary sources’. These are original records created at the time of the event. They are generally unpublished.

Some examples are:

• letters, manuscripts, diaries often from famous people
• notes or recordings of interviews
• photographs, sketches and paintings
• birth, death and marriage records
• land registries, titles to property, and maps
• court records
• architectural plans and engineering drawings
• audio, video and film records
• meeting minutes, memoranda, and correspondence of associations, political parties, local government councils, school boards, and other formal groups.

RG 9-138 Information Services Branch of the
Department of Economics and Development
Archives of Ontario

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Many items are unique, fragile and irreplaceable. They require temperature controlled conditions for storage, careful handling, and, because of their rarity, supervised viewing.

Governments, corporations, and other organizations may have working papers and reports from studies and investigations they undertook. As an example, the Archives of Ontario, holds the records for the Walkerton Inquiry into the causes of the contamination of Walkerton water supply in May 2000.

Archives are not necessarily old. Governments and organizations archive material continuously according to records management policies. A public archives might also receive recent papers from individual donors.