Information technology has spawned new evidentiary sources, better retrieval systems for existing ones, and new tools for interpreting traditional source materials. These advances have contributed to a broadening of public participation in civil society (Blouin and Rosenberg 2006). In these culturally unsettled and economically fragile times historians of education have witnessed a fracturing of popular consensus of what constitutes the appropriate form, substance, and direction of civil society. Shrinking popular consensus on the meanings and purpose of education and the role of government as its guarantor is at the center of one important civil society debate. Newer constituencies, borne of the socio-economic and technological changes of the last thirty years, are less accepting of differential access to centers of influence and power and are better able to articulate alternative points of view. In this article contemporary ideas and technologies used in archival work are applied to issues that historians of education encounter. How might one document rapid change in the nature of those institutions as they are buffeted by competing forces? Who are the various constituencies involved and how might their views and political positions be integrated into an inclusive consideration of change? To illustrate more expansive ways of considering documentary evidence, the article concludes with a consideration of the on-going struggles of the Detroit, Michigan, Public schools. The author seeks to illustrate how the evolution of archiving has come to reflect a more inclusive perspective on who is included in and makes history.