Just bought the legendary edition of skyrim for $15 at Target (years too late) and want to make an archer or archer/thief type character. Tried searching for a good build but can't find any that aren't 2011 or 2012. Anyone have any good links or ideas on how to create a character like this? It will be my first newb character.

Thanks!

I had a lot of fun with a Dunmer stealth archer a few characters ago.

Primary skills:
Archery
Sneak
Light armour
Restoration

She also dabbled in smithing, lock picking and enchanting.

Her back story had her as a young teenager who got lost and mixed up in the arrest of some Stormcloak traitors. Having escaped she had no idea how to get home and wandered Skyrim making a living from helping people until she could find her way home.

She got to level 50 before I retired her, but enjoyed player so much will certainly go back to her sometime soon, when I can think up a new motivation for her as a character.

Archery is not hard at all in Skyrim. Use one handed as a backup, wear light armor, but avoid sneak/smithing/enchanting as they can make the game too easy.

Or play on Legendary and visit Falmer dens to make it significantly NOT too easy again.

Those from 2011/2012 should still be valid. The Dawnguard, Hearthfires, and Dragonborn DLCs do not change archery at all. Dawnguard does add crossbows to the mix, but that is all.

Sneak works well with archery, getting the 3x sneak damage perk.

Poisons also work well with archery.

Have a melee weapon as back up.

Remember that any choices you make can be "fiddled with" later on. If you go down one skill path and decide later on it does not work, you can change to something else and go forward from there. Your skills improve as you use them.

Also, try things out on one character and see how they work. You can always create a new one

It also lets you craft arrows with smithing, but that mostly just means that you can use nicer arrows without restraint if your character uses smithing. Without Dawnguard and smithing, if you're like me, you'll probably mostly use iron through elven arrows for normal combat and save the nice ones, like glass and ebony, for bosses.

Is there a preferred race for an archer?

Not really. Early on, there are some races (Wood Elves?) that may have a little advantage (5 or 10 points into archery), but as you level up you will find everyone is the same. No race can go above 100 in any skill (not mentioning Legendary skills here as Tortfeasor is a new player), so anyone can "max out" any skill they decide to

[EDIT]

PS: I forgot to welcome you to the boards! Here is a complimentary http://images.uesp.net/c/c4/Fishystick.jpg!

Tamrielvault has a fantastic character building group:
http://tamrielvault.com/group/character-building
From this site you can search by category or popularity. If you search the Legendary ranks you will get the highest rated builds by the board members.
The Demonhunter is an archer build that is one of the most popular on the site.
The Arcane Archer is also very popular and both have interesting twists in their gameplay that you may not think of using.
Both of these are found in the groups legendary ranks, and are second and third in popularity ( you can sort them by most popular). I have played many builds from this site and learned a lot about many of the hidden game mechanics from reading these.