Seattle grunge collection, 1989-2005

Separated Materials

The items in the Seattle grunge collection were extracted from the Seattle Music and Arts file folders and scrapbooks located in the Arts, Literature and Recreation Department at the Central Library. This collection includes several hundred uncatalogued folders and 42 scrapbooks on a variety of topics and genres.

Related Materials

Music CDs, concert DVDs, and books created by and written about Seattle grunge music groups and individuals are located throughout the library system. All of them are discoverable in the catalog by searching under the subject heading: Grunge music – Washington (State) – Seattle.

Location of Originals

Some of the items included in this collection are photocopies. In many cases, originals copies of the same periodicals are also available at the Central Library. They can be found by searching the periodical title in the library catalog and checking the availability details to determine the floor where they are held.

Processing Note

Acknowledgement of Harmful Content
The Seattle Public Library Special Collections Department is committed to creating an inclusive archive that documents the history of our diverse communities in a respectful manner. Our collections include historic materials that may contain images and outdated language which can be harmful due to issues such as racism, colonialism, sexism and homophobia. This content can provide important insight into the creator and context of the historic materials but can also reveal hurtful biases and prejudices.

We may decide to use or retain harmful language in our description when the terms have been used by the creator(s) of the materials to describe themselves or their community; when we have reused description created by the donor; when we have transcribed information directly from the materials; and when using national standards such as Library of Congress Subject Headings, which allow for standardized searching and retrieval of records. When including language from the original material in our finding aids or descriptions, we will indicate that this material comes directly from the original item by putting the language in quotes or prefacing it with a note that says the description is transcribed from the item or provided by the creator.

We will continually review our finding aids to identify harmful language and encourage you to contact us at specialcollections@spl.org if you find language that causes concern.