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Think your filing cabinets are overflowing with papers? They're nothing compared to the National Archives.

They have more than 10 billion pages of paper documents. That's enough paper to circle the earth at the equator about 70 times.

Plus, the archives house 30 million photographs, 6 million maps, charts and drawings and more than 360,000 reels of film.

The National Archives have so many documents that 30 buildings around the country are needed to store them.

The National Archives preserves records generated by the federal government that have lasting value.

You might think most of the documents at the archives relate to federal officials and bureaucratic bigwigs.

But several documents about the average American line the miles of shelving, too.

Many of our ancestors served in the military. The archives holds military service records beginning with the Revolutionary War. Pre-World War I records are in Washington, and later military records are in St. Louis.

You can also hunt for your ancestors in the more than 10 million land records. The archives hold the records for the land transferred from the government to individuals.

Many researchers can find ancestors in the immigration records. The archives maintain passenger arrival lists from foreign ports between 1820 and 1982. There are also U.S. Customs Service passenger lists for 1820 to 1890.

If your immigrant ancestor was naturalized in a federal court, you might find the records at the archives. Most naturalizations before 1906, though, were handled at the local and state level.

If your ancestors traveled abroad, you might find them in passport application records. Generally, Americans used to have carte blanche regarding foreign travel and didn't need passports. But, there were exceptions. The archives has passport applications from 1795 to 1925.

The archives are the primary keeper of census records, another essential resource for genealogists. Copies of census records, though, are widely available in many places besides the archives.

That's just a quick overview of some of the records most useful for genealogists. The National Archives has more information.

Most of us can't go to Washington, D.C. often to inspect archival records. We can request photocopies of certain records. And, some of the microfilmed records can be borrowed via interlibrary loan. Review National Archives for various ways to get archival documents.

There is an online catalog that lists more than half of the holdings in the archives. Known as ARC, the Archival Research Catalog allows you to search for record groups that pertain to your ancestors. They continue to add items regularly.

The archives also has several publications to assist researchers, both in print and online.

Next week, I'll write about some of the National Archives records that can be found on the Internet.