Comparison of Two Archival Repositories Websites The New York State Archives website provided access to textual records, photographs government documents, artifacts, and manuscripts. The digital collection archive is mostly derived from the New York State Archives, New York State Museum, and the State Library. From the collection of information, one can access from the website it is mostly historical in nature, which makes the website highly targeted towards genealogists, historians, and K-12 students. Looking at the Florida State Archives website, it does not offer as much information as the New York State Archive, but it does provide select archival resources that have been pulled from the collections held in the State Library and Archives of Florida. The website has mainly digitized materials and information that illuminates the state's culture and history. This makes the website mostly geared towards genealogists, historians, and K-12 students. The website is quite different from the New York State Archive in that the domain used does not show it is a state-owned website and this might be slightly confusing for researchers. Although there are links from the state library, it should be made easy to recognize and relate it back to the state library archives. In complete contrast, the New York State Archive uses a subdomain of the state website and this confirms authenticity easily. The website also has numerous digitized collections including audio and video, online catalogs, and ancestry of the State. For a researcher, this would be valuable information depending on what they are researching.

The primary mission of the New York State Archives is to lead efforts on behalf of all New Yorkers in the management, preservation, ensuring open access to, and promoting the wide usages of the records held within the archive (New York State Archives, n.d). The mission is well reflected on the website in that there are numerous archives posted and accessible on the website. However. there are others whose catalogs are on the website, but one has to visit the state library in order to access the information. Although this does go against their mission, it is clear the mission was crafted with the free and easy access to the information not only online but also offline at the library. With a vast array of information being held...

The mission of the Florida State Archives is to preserve and make available the permanent historical public and private records of Florida within their custody to the public (State Archives of Florida, n.d). The information offered on the archival website is selected based on the significance of events and individuals in the state's history with an aim to educate the Floridians and other people around the world. With this in mind, it is clear that the information offered is not as comprehensive as one would expect especially if they are conducting non-historical research. The material offered online is not meant to be used for research purposes, but rather for educational purposes. Therefore, the information cannot be solely utilized for research, but it can form a good basis for a research study.
The two institutions have a web presence, but the level of presence is what differentiates them from each other. The target audience for the two archival websites is similar because they both hold historical information pertaining to their respective states. The New York web archive holds numerous information and it has links that direct one to more relevant information that they might be seeking. In complete comparison, the Florida State archive is quite limited in scope and information that it holds. The two websites do have photographs, video, audio, and documents that pertain to their respective state history and they have been digitized to make access to them easy for the general public. Education is at the fore front of both websites and they have created online classroom content that can be used by teachers to guide their students. The educational content is well defined and there are numerous images and photographs used to represent the information. The New York Archive also accepts submissions from students in grades 4-12 for a reward program that encourages the students to explore the wealth of information being held in the archives. The award consists of a cash prize and certificates. Any researcher who wants to perform genealogical research can be able to use the two websites and they will uncover vast information, however, they might be forced to visit the physical archive at some point since not all the information would be…