About OpenPasts

OpenPasts is a guide to researching the past with public archives. We write for people tracing their own families and people curious about the history of their own towns: where the records are, how to read them, and how to use them without harming anyone who's still alive.

The site has a research log that keeps your notes in your own browser, a page on where to look for each kind of record, and a set of guides on the census, newspapers, libraries and archives, FOIA, research ethics, and getting old arrest records off the internet.

What we don't do

OpenPasts publishes no records about individuals. There's no people search, no background reports and no mugshots, and we don't sell or broker data of any kind. We don't help anyone find a living person. These limits are the point of the site, not a temporary gap.

We aren't affiliated with the National Archives, the Library of Congress or any government agency. When a guide describes a government service, it links to the official source.

How we write

The guides are written by the OpenPasts Team. We check facts against primary sources: the agencies and archives that hold the records, and the laws themselves. Rules about access change, so we phrase time-sensitive details carefully and update guides when we learn something has changed. Nothing on the site is legal advice.

There are no ads, affiliate links or sponsored recommendations. If you find a mistake, please tell us.

History of this domain

From 2014 to around 2020 this domain hosted an unrelated public-records search service; none of its pages or data were kept. The site was relaunched in 2026 under new, independent management and has no connection to earlier owners of the domain.