Our access to [history] is becoming more restricted every day. What remains available [is being] reframed to suit more comfortable narrative. Inconvenient truths are being omitted or [redacted.]
There’s an urgent need to [protect] [the] firsthand accounts of history by ensuring open access to records of the [past] — That work must begin [before] those stories are replaced. [It's] still possible to make a difference — it’s not [too late!]
Access isn’t just a resource.
It's a responsibility.
It’s a responsibility we recognize—and one we accept our part in. That is why we are offering any nonprofit dedicated to safeguarding public memory and providing access to its historical collections a free digital archive and a $500 credit to help them get started.
Claim The $500 Credit Now And Protect Your History
Get Started Today By Claiming Your $500 Credit
- Your community’s stories deserve to be accessible. We want to extend our support to help you ensure they are.
Why Now?
- Right now, access to history is under real, growing pressure. Across the country, we’re seeing institutions that have long protected public memory — libraries, museums, archives – being politically targeted.
- It’s not just about removing books or websites. It’s about controlling the story. And more often than not, the stories that get cut first are the ones that document the hard truths about race, inequality, gender, struggle, and resilience.
- At a time like this, access to local, firsthand historical records becomes more than a resource…it becomes a responsibility.
- Your community’s stories deserve to be accessible. We want to extend our support to help you ensure they are.
Our Offer
- Digitizing and sharing local history can feel overwhelming, especially for institutions facing funding challenges, political and ideological pressures, or a lack of dedicated staff, which often makes it difficult to know where to begin.
- That’s why we’re offering a simple way to take the first step: direct support to help you launch a sustainable, public-facing digital archive built for your community.
Qualifying Non-profits will receive:
A Digital Platform For Your Collection
We will provide you with a digital archive that anyone can access anytime, from anywhere, on any device, at no cost to the public or your institution.
A $500 Credit To Help Get You Started
We want to help you take the first step in unlocking your community's past, so we will give you a $500 credit to apply to digitizing your local history materials.
Unrestricted, Free Access For Everyone
Anyone can access the Community History Archives for free. No subscriptions, no paywalls, and no barriers between your community and its history.
A Partner To Support You In Every Phase
We collaborate with you from planning to launch and beyond. Hosting, storage, maintenance, and development are all included - at no cost to your institution.
Claim The $500 Credit Now And Protect Your History
Don't Let Your History Be Rewritten Reframed Redacted Reshaped Removed
- “This work isn’t about scanning documents. It’s about creating access to firsthand accounts of history at a time when there is an effort to silence certain voices from the past. If we don’t have access to everyone’s stories, what will pass for ‘history’ will be the accounts that have been rewritten, reframed, and retold to fit a convenient narrative.”
- Jeffrey Kiley,
- Founder of Advantage Archives
Partnering For Equitable Access
- Equitable access means every individual—not just those with the most visibility, resources, or historical documentation—can see themselves reflected in their community’s story.
- It ensures that small-town newspapers, rural school records, immigrant interviews, Black community publications, labor union newsletters, cultural event photos, tribal governance documents, and records of historically marginalized voices are given equal value—not treated as secondary or supplemental.
- These records deserve the same visibility, digital accessibility, and respect as any other records in the historical narrative.
About Us
- From the beginning, we’ve believed that access to local history should be equitable, open, and free.
- That belief has never been a marketing line—it’s the foundation Advantage Archives was built on.
- We work to build partnerships with community leaders to preserve and digitize history in order to make it discoverable and easily accessible to anyone, anywhere, and allow communities to understand and connect to their past in a meaningful way.
- Our model is designed to remove barriers, not create them. That’s why there are no subscriptions, no fees, no licenses, no future costs, just uninterrupted access to the history your community has a right to explore.
- And today, this is more important than ever.
What Our Partners Think
"Local history is important to our community, and having resources available online has opened access to documents that are fragile and in need of preservation. Our Community History Archive has allowed us to serve a global audience, rather than just those individuals who walk through our doors. Digitized resources are invaluable, and we plan to continue to add resources to our archive each year "
"We live in a time where people have come to expect that the vast majority of information that they are seeking can be found quickly through online searches. However, extremely specific questions like those we see with local history questions don’t lend themselves to successful “Google” searches. By providing access to this material online we’re contributing to our mission to provide material to our patrons in the manner and fashion that they now perform their research."
"Newspapers preserve the history of our communities. We have had very consistent usage of the Jefferson Community History Archive, and statistics also show usage from all other states and many other countries. We have always wanted to expand this resource to include resources that represent the history of the whole county!”
“We don’t want to be gatekeepers of history. We want to be enablers for people. We’re trying to put more in the hands of the public because that’s why we have it here. We’ve preserved it for the public.”
"The earliest records of the history of our community are found in the newspapers, That’s really what we want, is we want people to be able to go out and find these old newspapers, and search through and find out where we came from, and how we got to be where we are today. "
Michelle Setlik
Hall County Historical Society
"Our Community History Archive is a valuable tool for preserving and celebrating the past and guiding the future. Having access to information about the heritage of our town is important for determining our place in that continuing narrative, helping create meaning and a dynamic sense of community identity!”
Sue Gardner
Local History Librarian at the Albert Wisner Public Library
Help Us Bring The Past To The Present
- Primary sources—local newspapers, photographs, school records, meeting minutes, oral histories, land deeds—these aren’t dusty artifacts. They’re proof.
- They’re the receipts of lived experience. They allow communities to see themselves in the record, not as footnotes or sidebars, but as central participants in the American story.
- We want to help you create access to these collections.
Partner with us to provide access to your community's past!
- In a time of restriction and revision, public access is our collective responsibility.
- Let’s accept this responsibility together.
- We want to help you provide access to your community’s history before others to decide whose story is told and how it is shared.
Create Accessible Collections
Don’t Let Access Disappear Without a Fight!
- Your community’s primary sources offer unfiltered insight into struggle, progress, and identity. They are among our strongest defenses against distortion and erasure. Without access, history can be easily reframed or rewritten to serve a more convenient narrative.
- The truth is at risk. We’re here to help you protect it.
- To support your efforts to make local history accessible, we’re offering a free digital archive and $500 in digitization credit to help you take the first step.
