Pennsylvania Digital Archives Offer Window to the Past

Citizens of Pennsylvania, researchers and other history buffs around the world can now access Pennsylvania historical records online, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission said July 3.

The Archives Records Information Access System will give access to the resources of the Pennsylvania State Archives from users' homes or local libraries.

The system currently offers about 200,000 images relating to the participation of Pennsylvanians in the Revolutionary War, Spanish-American War and World War I. More than 300,000 Civil War and Mexican War service card images also are being loaded onto the system, said the commission.

Eventually, millions of digitized records ? ranging from 19th-century county birth, death and marriage dockets to collections of photographs illustrating every aspect of the Pennsylvania experience ? will be added, the commission said.

"Genealogists are hungry for access to records such as these," said James Beidler, executive director of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania.

"The beauty of the resources found [on the system] is that they will lead researchers to the original source documents, which is what every family historian yearns to find about his or her ancestors, Beidler said.

The records can be accessed through the state's Web site, www.state.pa.us, or directly from the commission's site at www.phmc.state.pa.us.