The Beaton Institute archives is a community and university archives that specializes in the rich social, economic, cultural, religious, political, labour, industrial, environmental and rural history of Cape Breton Island. The origins of the Institute date to 1957 when Sister Margaret Beaton, former Librarian of Xavier College, the predecessor to the Cape Breton University, began collecting material pertaining to the Gaelic language and culture.

The Beaton Institute archives has thousands of personal papers, records, diaries, documents, business material, ledgers, census, church records, land grants, worker’s time books, street directories, maps, theses, reports, pamphlets, as well as other forms of resource material.