The Queens Library will now be able to protect more of the borough's past for anyone who needs the information in the future.

The library has moved its archives from the second floor of the Central Library in Jamaica to the lower level.

The new location features climate-controlled storage that will help preserve thousands of documents. They include maps, photographs, newspapers and books that document the history of Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island.

The library has also launched a digital archives website where the public can get online access to more than 12,000 items from the archives.

"What I've been able to do is even take a look at the neighborhood I grew up in, Addisleigh Park, and really search back to time way before I was born and look at some of the maps, look at some of the articles, looking at the growth of the community. And it's really a historian's dream," said Dennis Walcott, the president of the Queens Library.

To check out the library's new archives website, head to digitalarchives.queenslibrary.org.