1A collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.

1. 1.1The place where historical documents or records are kept.
   ‘they were allowed to study in the archives’
   More example sentences

   • ‘Plans for a ‘joined up service’, with libraries, archives, museums and galleries all together under one roof, have been launched by East Riding Council.’
   • ‘Col Babbitt and Mrs Zemp were invited to visit Rishworth School and yesterday saw the original Sowerby Parish Registers at the archives in the Central Library.’
   • ‘The new gallery, with its associated study room and archives, is a £10m joint venture.’
   • ‘I stayed in America for six weeks and spent every moment, apart from Sundays when the archives were closed, studying my documents.’
   • ‘Historical societies frequently have a library, archives, and museum.’
   • ‘How are museums and archives and libraries to preserve the heritage of ‘film’ within the precepts of museum culture?’
   • ‘It's hard to access contemporary design independently - it's not in archives or libraries.’
   • ‘But she says there's a difference between a library and the archives.’
   • ‘As I said, we hope to be able to raise the money to build a library and archives as well as some temporary exhibit space.’
   • ‘The library and archives share the same building, which is a converted medieval chapel in Dean's Park.’
   • ‘The newspapers are preserved in the archives of the British Library, and are now published for the first time.’
   • ‘Beyond, I think, any journalist I have known, McKinnon seems to be happiest in archives and libraries, peering into microfiches and at computer screens.’
   • ‘The holes in the roofs mean the torrential rains of the Cambodian wet season are washing away the brickwork, riddling the walls with damp and causing irreparable damage to the museum archives.’
   • ‘A staggering 1,300 unpublished letters written by Nelson have been unearthed from archives at the museum and throughout the world.’
   • ‘The new complex, near Celbridge, will also include internal courtyards, offices, library, archives and reception rooms.’
   • ‘Not only do they have to spend much time and effort learning languages, they must also spend months or years abroad in the archives and libraries of their chosen fields.’
   • ‘It contains more than 65 full-color paintings and Civil War maps from the archives of the Library of Congress.’
   • ‘Local archives house valuable deeds documenting the glory of the mediaeval city, which has witnessed the coronation of 11 Hungarian kings and eight regal wives.’
   • ‘Laudably, the bill strives to achieve collection in the archives of all appropriate public documents.’
   • ‘At that time, the archives housed approximately six collections that documented the lives and experiences of African American women.’
   Synonyms

   record office, registry, repository, museum, chancery

   View synonyms
2. 1.2A complete record of the data in part or all of a computer system, stored on an infrequently used medium.
   ‘Optical media is also perfect for storing archives of critical corporate data, such as financials or personnel records.’
   More example sentences

   • ‘At the same time the PRO will outline its digital archive system which will store electronic government records.’
   • ‘Second, many ILE faculty members were interested in building data archives with data sets from many different government agencies.’
   • ‘A search may span several email servers and, in some cases, the personal archives on hundreds of desktop computers.’
   • ‘Apple Computer gave away its archives to save money.’
   • ‘What was saved and stored in electronic archives may be rapidly decaying or unable to be easily retrieved due to the obsolescence of technology.’
   • ‘Animation is very expensive, and a well-designed digital archives management system can help keep costs down.’
   • ‘One other important search-related function of archives is data mining, when the results of a query are retained as a new category.’
   • ‘With archives, you specifically store only the files and directories required to describe the project - nothing more, nothing less.’
   • ‘Video on demand systems store vast archives of material and, for a price, viewers with broadband lines can download any program at any time.’
   • ‘Police first raided the company offices in Moscow in July, spending nearly 17 hours searching through computer archives.’
   • ‘From the outset of planning the project, we sought to make the Web site more interactive than scores of digital archives now inhabiting the Internet.’
   • ‘KVault's software allows e-mails to be stored centrally but also archives them so they can be produced at a moment's notice.’
   • ‘Modern, sophisticated systems automatically scan the archive periodically to determine the condition of the data.’
   • ‘Furthermore, the compression abilities of the Info-ZIP tools allow one to significantly reduce the size of the file archives on the Linux backup system.’
   • ‘Kaspersky Anti-Virus, for example, can now detect protected Zip archives, scan the email body for the password and then unpack and check the attachment for viruses.’
   • ‘Even though the information exists, finding it in the data bases and archives can be challenging.’
   • ‘They retrieved the corresponding images from the data archives of these facilities for further analysis.’
   • ‘However, as messages sent to mailing lists are sometimes also stored in web accessible archives, the actual number of people accessing messages may be greater than assumed and may be impossible to determine.’
   • ‘AOL has unveiled details of a new broadband TV service that will see the giant ISP raid the archives of sister company Warner Bros.’

1Place or store (something) in an archive.

1. 1.1Computing Transfer (data) to a less frequently used storage medium such as magnetic tape.
   ‘the entire directory will be archived’
   More example sentences

   • ‘Tape remains a strong contender for long term data archiving and off-site storage.’
   • ‘Tape is the overwhelming computer medium of choice for archiving.’
   • ‘You manage your e-mail by archiving it on cheaper storage devices.’
   • ‘Viacom has bought the storage system to archive Paramount's ‘Entertainment Tonight’ shows.’
   • ‘As the data ages even more, eventually the same migration software archives it onto a data warehouse for analysis, or onto tape and out the door to off-site vaults.’