The Seattle Municipal Archives (SMA) holdings document the history, development, and activities of City of Seattle agencies and elected officials. Learn more about SMA.
In this Finding Aids site, you can find descriptions of records documenting the history and activities of City government. Read about SMA's collections.
Records are described in several ways:
- Record series: Series-level descriptions include titles, dates, creators, volume of records, subject headings, related names, and narrative descriptions of the contents of the records. A record series is a collection of similar records created by the same entity, e.g., City Light Annual Reports, or a department director’s subject files. To search only at this level, select “limit to series.”
- Archival folders: File-level description includes folder titles and date spans of individual folders in the archives. The folder record links to the record series, showing you who created the folder and what set of records it belongs to. To search only at this level, select “limit to archival folders.”
- Record group: All record series originating from one creator comprise a record group. Searching for a record group will lead you to a description of that creating agency or individual and a link out to all record series attached to that creator. This can be helpful if you want to browse all records created by a certain department, for example. To search only at this level, select “limit to record groups.”
You can also search for names and subject terms to find related series, folders, and record groups.
If you would like to request items to view on-site, or to have copied, you will need to note the series ID along with box and folder numbers.
See the Help page for detailed search instructions.
Example searches:
affordable housing OR low income housing in archival folders
mayor rice in search all between 1988 to 1990
city light in record groups