Minutes from Tacoma City Council meetings. In addition to regular meetings, minutes from study sessions, budget meetings, and special meetings are also included.

Interview projects created by Lincoln High School students enrolled in English classes taught by Max Anders. Students chose a person to interview whose voice they felt needed to be heard, transcribed the interview, and added their own reflections.

Includes interviews conducted by Franklin Pierce High School students for an Ethnic Studies class with teacher Dan Call. Students interviewed family, friends, and other community members about race, racial identity, microaggressions, and discrimination. Interview transcripts created by students have been produced for some audio recordings.

Includes oral histories, digital images, and event flyers related to the development and creation of a Black Lives Matter mural produced in Tollefson Plaza in 2022. The mural was created by artists Dionne Bonner, Kenya Adams, Gwen Jones, Charles Taylor, and Breeze and was a collaboration between the Human Rights Commission's Racial Justice and Equity Committee, the Tacoma Arts Commission, and the Tacoma Art Museum.

LUSS: Latinx Unidos of the South Sound
Latinx Unidos of the South Sound (LUSS)’s mission is to facilitate the engagement of South Sound Latinos in the broader community by 1) calling attention to the expressed needs of this diverse group, 2) encouraging pride in Latino cultural heritage, and 3) promoting and expanding on existing opportunities and resources. LUSS’s vision is “to see the full inclusion of Latinos in a society where our culture is celebrated.” LUSS is a volunteer-based grassroots group that has been advocating for Pierce County's Latinx community since it was formed in 2016, during and after, two Latino Town Halls organized by Latinx community volunteers. LUSS primarily outreaches to the Pierce County Latinx community which includes people from 21 countries and territories. Since our inception, LUSS has created recommendations for actionable items, policies, and recommendations to improve the living conditions of Latinx, immigrants, and refugees in the City of Tacoma and surrounding areas. LUSS most often engages Latinx community members experiencing socio-economic disparities and barriers to access as a historically underserved community. Barriers include, but are not limited to, language access, lack of proficiency with technology, and being undocumented residents. Our core group of volunteers, promotoras, and the majority of volunteers are Latinx community members. A team of promotoras, who reflect the community, serve and engage the Latinx community in Spanish. Recent campaigns include census promotion and supporting COVID-19 outreach, prevention, testing, and vaccination promotion in partnership with the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department for the past three years. We celebrate our cultures with an annual Festival Latinx. All people are invited to join our annual free showcase of Latinx arts, culture, and heritage that is Festival Latinx.

Includes event programs, meeting notes, work plans, and publications related to the Tacoma Chapter of the Black Women's Caucus of Washington State. Also included is an oral history interview conducted with four members of the Tacoma Chapter.

Includes studies, reports, newspaper clippings and other documentation related to the Chambers-Clover Creek Watershed. Also included are meeting minutes, agendas, educational materials, and operational documents produced by the Chambers-Clover Creek Watershed Council.

Includes documents related to the establishment and operations of the Hilltop Library Planning Committee. Also included is an oral history recorded with members and a short video created by the committee.

Includes video recordings from WILLO Storytelling Festivals held between 2014 and 2019. Participants include Senator Rosa Franklin, Puyallup Tribal leader Ramona Bennett, writer Tamiko Nimura, Representative Marilyn Strickland, Superintendent Carla Santorno, and WILLO founder Seong Shin.

Includes video interviews created for the documentary "The Evolution of Collective Wisdom" along with bios of the interviewees. Also included are materials related to the Black Collective's Black History Month programming.

Radio Tacoma (101.9) is an all-volunteer, low-power FM community radio station with a mission "to serve Tacoma and the surrounding area, providing the opportunity for participatory democracy as a venue for local voices, news, and talent that might otherwise not get heard." Their regular programming includes The Cannabis Corner, Climate Talk, and Grit City Stories.

Includes oral history interviews with students enrolled in English language classes at Tacoma Community House.

Includes research files and notes gathered and compiled by Pfutzenreuter related to the Salishan neighborhood. Also included is Justi's "Narratives of Salishan: The Untold Story," a documentary she produced for her Masters Capstone Project in Spring 2019 as part of the University of Washington Tacoma's Masters of Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies program.

The documentary introduction states, "When it comes to Salishan, most of the history that we do know lies in short, unnuanced articles in the Tacoma News Tribune. These articles were, and continue to be, influential in the ways readers view the neighborhood and those who live in it. Written by outsiders who may have preconceived notions, these articles leave no space for residents’ voices and their experiences. Taking this into consideration, the history that we don’t know resides in the minds and memories of those who have lived there, including families that belong to the Puyallup Tribe from whom the land was originally taken. It’s important to examine these perspectives to develop a fuller picture of the neighborhood. Since its origins in 1943, Salishan has had a negative reputation within the larger community. Without the voices of the tenants, negative stereotypes about Salishan will persist. We should ask, 'who’s telling the story?' and 'who’s constructing the narrative of Salishan?' This film project documents the experiences of residents, using their own voices, as an intervention into the dominant negative narrative about Salishan."

Includes writings, photographs, flyers, and other information related to Charles Carson's work as a speaker, musician, and activist.

Born digital videos created by Tacoma-based filmmaker Paul Jackson, PhD including documentaries, interviews, and recordings of regional meetings and events.

Includes videos, interviews, and other material gathered by the Community Archives Center at community events.

Oral histories and interviews conducted with community members by the Community Archives Center.

Dear Tacoma was a cooperative project undertaken by the Tacoma Public Library's Northwest Room and Grit City Magazine to collect local stories about living during the COVID-19 pandemic. Launched in May 2020, the collection consists of documents such as audio recordings, emails, photographs, and other content submitted by the general public to the library.

Includes maps of the northwestern United States from various sources. Coverage is primarily focused on Washington, Pierce County, and Tacoma.

Includes posters created and displayed during World War I issued by various federal and non-profit organizations including the US Food Administration, the Red Cross, the American Library Association and others. Also included are British, Canadian, and French posters.

Includes booklets, manuscripts, theses and dissertations, reports, and other writings about Washington State. Also included are writings about and by Washington authors.

Includes publications by the California Joint Immigration Committee of San Francisco, newspaper clippings, government orders, proclamations, and other papers relating to a campaign in the 1920s and 1930s to bar Japanese people from West Coast states, a locally organized campaign to stop Japanese individuals from owning farmland, and the relocation and incarceration of Japanese citizens during World War II.

Includes local and regional cookbooks and recipes produced by community organizations, churches, and businesses.

Contains menus from area restaurants and local special events. Also included are several menus from ships.

Includes items created for a short term purpose that have been retained for their long term historical, informational, or research value. These include pamphlets and brochures, tickets, and event programs.

Includes materials related to World War II collected by Tacoma Public Library including reports, pamphlets, propaganda, maps, bulletins, and Tacoma war ration book. A photo biography of Adolf Hitler compiled by Joseph Goebbels for the German people titled "Adolf Hitler: Pictures from the Life of the Fuhrer" is also included.

The "Lost Tacoma" project was originally designed and conceived by archivist Jeanie Fisher. It includes blueprints and technical drawings of both proposed buildings in Tacoma which were never constructed and constructed buildings which are now demolished. This is a partial representation of the Lost Tacoma collection, constituting 116 of the total 560 blueprints across 26 locations. Digitization for this project was supported by a 2016 Pierce County Historic Preservation Grant.

The Northwest Room’s set of The North American Indian consists of twenty individually bound books, each with an average of 250 pages and 75 images, and 20 accompanying portfolios, each with an average of 36 large image plates housed in each folding case.

Includes scrapbooks created by various individuals, families, organizations, and businesses. Some creators are unidentified. Scrapbooks may include photographs, newspaper clippings, writing, and ephemera.

Includes mostly mailers, flyers, newspaper clippings, sample ballots and voter guides from various political races in and around Tacoma and Pierce County as well as election races for state and federal positions. Material related to bond measures, levies, initiatives, propositions and referendums are also present. Series marked c. 1980-c. 1995 contain material sorted by the politician's last name.