Archive guide · US
Digital Public Library of America
connected, not yet live
What it holds
Metadata for photographs, letters, diaries, yearbooks, local records from 4,000+ US institutions
Who runs it, and on what terms
- Provider
- DPLA
- Licence for use here
- Metadata open; items per holding institution
- Attribution
- Link to the providing institution's page (isShownAt)
- Cost to search
- free (key by email)
- Terms read
- 2026-09-06
- Official documentation
- https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
Status: needs DPLA_API_KEY (free; request at pro.dp.la/developers). Until it is live, Provara tells you when this archive is where to look and you bring the record in yourself.
How to search it in Provara
- Archive catalogues and finding aids: ask Provara what an archive holds on a family or a place.
- Historical photographs: ask Provara for a photograph of a place or an event your family was part of.
- Manuscripts: ask Provara whether a manuscript collection mentions a family.
- Provara searches this archive alongside every other live one, ranks what comes back by how many of the person's recorded facts each hit contains, and shows you the record with a ready citation. Nothing is added to your tree until you confirm it.
Record types here
- Archive catalogues and finding aids — Descriptions of what an archive holds, so you know what to request before you travel or write.
- Historical photographs — Portraits, places and events held by libraries and archives, free to view and often free to reuse.
- Manuscripts — Unpublished handwritten material held by archives — family papers, account books, sermons.
No card needed. Build and source your tree free; search these archives free; the assistant's research runs on tokens.
Every licence on these pages was read from the archive's own terms on the date shown. Provara proposes only what a record it has read supports, shows the record beside the claim, and marks anything unsourced as a hypothesis. Nothing on this page states a fact about any person.