Community InvolvementOftentimes some of the most important information about the history of a community is lost because the people in it were not consulted or questioned by researchers. The Tacoma Community History Project attempts to document this "unwritten" history of Tacoma and the South Puget Sound region. We thank all participants, past and future, who have assisted in preserving the history of this area, as told by the people themselves. This project would not have been possible without the generous support of local communities and the interviewee participants who also provided photographs, documents, and other primary source material. In one notable example, Michael Royce provided a nearly complete run of the Fort Lewis Free Press, an unofficial anti-war newspaper published by G.I.s during the Vietnam War. These kinds of primary source materials, combined with the oral history recordings and transcripts, make each project a rich source for future researchers into the history of Tacoma and the South Sound region. The students who created each project were responsible for asking interviewees to sign release forms that permit the student to deposit the project into the Library and make it publicly accessible. We have made these projects available online in the spirit of significantly enhancing public access for researchers and the local community. If you or your relatives were directly involved in any of these projects, inquires can be directed to Justin Wadland, Head of Media and Digital Collections at the UW Tacoma Library, via jwadland@uw.edu. |
