Our Collections

Our collections contain thousands of unique documents, plans and photographs that tell the story of over 850 years of York’s history. Our oldest document dates from 1155, the most recent from this year.

We also look after thousands of books, historic newspapers and maps about the city and surrounding area.

The civic archive contains the records of City of York Council and its predecessors, whilst our community collections include personal and family papers as well as the records of York-based charities, businesses and community groups.

Our archive catalogue is searchable by keyword, and is one of the best places to start your research. We also have many collections catalogues on The National Archives’ Discovery database and the Archives Hub website. You can also search our library catalogue to find items held and our special collections and local history library.

We have created resources to help with accessing our archive collections and to support your research. Our collections guides are a great starting point to find out more about our archives here at Explore as they highlight some of the significant collections that we have. Our research guides offer an introduction to resources for researching topics i.e. Family History. This includes relevant collections held at Explore, relevant material held at other repositories and a selection of further resources.