Since last February, the Northwest Room team has been hard at work on an exciting new project. We have been very busy organizing, arranging, and describing large parts of our physical collections to build “Northwest Online Records and Collections Access," or Northwest ORCA for short. Simply put, ORCA is an online database that allows you to explore descriptions of the Northwest Room's collections. With it, you can access both digitized and born-digital content! Explore 3D images, mayor's papers, letters, audio and video recordings, and much more!
While it looks and operates differently than our other online pages, like the Buildings Index or the Image Archive, we think you will get the hang of it quickly. To help get you up to speed the Northwest Room has put together a PDF guide and video that teaches you the basics of browsing, searching, and downloading items. These items can be found here (Video) (Guide). While you explore, keep in mind that it is database will continue to grow and more content will be added regularly!
If you have any questions about ORCA, please feel free to contact us at (253) 280-2814 or NWR@tacomalibrary.org
The ORCA homepage can be found here: https://northwestroom.tacomalibrary.org/
