Among their more important tasks is ensuring the accessibility and preservation of the information produced by governments, both analogically and digitally, for the government itself, researchers and the public.
Some national archives collections are large, holding millions of items spanning several centuries, while others have been created more recently and have modest collections.
Many national archives are effectively dispersed, especially in post-colonial countries, and often have smaller local collections due to cultural imperialism and the theft of cultural and national documents and artifacts.
There are ongoing international efforts to repatriate these materials to their communities of origin, in particular Indigenous cultural and intellectual property.
In the last decade, digitization projects have made possible to browse records and contents online.