And the archives can also be very personal.

Your family genealogy research has become more complete with the 141 years of digitized archives. You can access the history of your family’s birth notices, weddings or obituaries and how they helped to shape St. Louis.

The archives also can be fun, as you might want to see photos of the year your high school won the state championship, when you won a special award in your youth or to divine the history behind the old buildings, businesses and parks in your neighborhood.

Whatever happened to your past friends or work colleagues? The archives might even help you prepare for the next job search or complete a project at work.

Before the new archiving project, such research was time-consuming using microfilm that required going to the library. Now, you can search the Post-Dispatch archives anytime and anywhere you have an online connection.

Here’s how it works:

The Post-Dispatch archives are a collection of 4 million pages from January 1874 to current archives dating to 30 days ago.