About this journal
Welcome to the Urban Archivist!
This journal is a collection of snapshots, both textual and photographic, of various aspects of urban life. It documents informal observations and provides some level of analysis and interpretation. Above all, the Urban Archivist is a subjective journal punctuated with visceral, colorful — and sometimes irreverent — reactions and reflections to urban encounters.
The Urban Archivist is not a metro blog reporting the latest happenings in one city. Other blogs do this far better: Seattlest.com, for example, or Metroblogging. Rather, we think about larger themes that occur in all urban centers. We also write about ostensibly mundane things that happen in places that aren’t sexy or newsworthy to the other outlets. Yet, we report them because these occurrences are sexy and newsworthy to us. They are important because they are part of our everyday, lived experiences and they connect us as citizens to our cities.
Although we frequently describe specific observations in the cities in which we live, we hope to compare and connect them to other places. To help us in this endeavor, we seek contributions from lively writers and keen observers in other cities.
Furthermore, our scope differs from journalism, i.e. reportage and commentary. Our intent falls more along the lines of contemporary archaeology and/or ethnography. We uncover the city through active exploration of public spaces. We engage with the people who use them. And we archive evidence of social interaction and communication. Then we augment our documentary collection through interpretation, analysis, and relation to other threads of thought. In a sense, this journal contains field notes: seeds of thoughts which may be revisited later in more in-depth studies.
As scholars, we hope to provide and provoke informed discussion of various topics. As citizens, we also realize that, like everybody else, we are biased participants in our environment. We may not be objective in this journal’s pages; however we attempt to be tranparent and forthcoming of our biases. This journal, then, consists of personal and passionate reflections rather than objective and cold observations. We do not moderate one another. Each entry reflects the points of view of the author alone.
This journal is one component of the Urban Archives project.
About the Urban Archives
The Urban Archives project contributes to the body of knowledge on urban communication. Since 2004, we have been documenting Seattle’s streets and conducting original research using a variety of approaches and perspectives. We carry out field research by capturing urban texts such as graffiti, public art, advertising, signage, and architectural design. These urban texts are archived, annotated, and shared with the community for further research and analysis. Since our inception, our data collection has expanded beyond Seattle.
A concise history of the Urban Archives
The Urban Archives started out as a conversation between Tom Dobrowolsky and Irina Gendelman, both graduate students at the University of Washington, in early 2004. Tom was working on his Master of Library & Information Science while Irina was pursuing a PhD in Communication. Both shared an interest in studying the ways that people and public spaces communicate with each other.
What started out as a crazy idea of forming a research group gained momentum through the devotion of uncompensated personal time, the support of professor David Silver, UW librarian Jessica Albano, the excitement of undergraduate students, and an eagerness to collaborate on the part of Ann Lally and Anne Graham at UW Libraries Digital Initiatives. Eventually, we were joined by Giorgia Aiello, also working on her PhD in Communication, who brought her expertise in visual studies and photography to the project.
Currently, in addition to pursuing our own research interests, we are mentoring undergraduate research projects, we are creating a publicly available digital archives of urban texts, and we are developing methods of teaching and field research.
