January 2023
It’s been a while! Starting off strong in 2023, one of our New Year’s Resolutions is to keep our community more updated on the inner workings of UA via this blog. Here are some tidbits about what we’ve been up to.
In October 2022, we launched our latest project with the Queens Public Library, the Queens Name Explorer, which explores how locations in the borough got their names, specifically those that come from historic figures and local residents. It’s a really unique and exciting project that brings something new to the UA space. If you haven’t already, we highly recommend you explore the site.
Heading into January, we’ve set up meetings with each of our partners and are collaboratively brainstorming for how to make 2023 UA’s best year yet. On that note, we’ll be back up and running on LinkNYC in 2023 and hope to use that system to better integrate our platform with real people and help our partners meet their goals.
Our biggest undertaking for the new year is Urban Archive 2.0, a revamped version of our web app. Don’t worry, the Urban Archive you love isn’t going anywhere, but our updated version will have a new design that hopefully allows for a smoother and more enriching user experience. Here are 5 things you can look forward to in UA 2.0:
- A wider variety of supported records
- New cities from all over the world (see more updates below)
- All new partner organization profiles
- Easier, modern sign-in experience
- A top-to-bottom redesign that puts collections in the spotlight
Some other updates…
- Trivia is back! Some may remember that our weekly newsletter used to be gamified occasionally; well, we’ve switched that over to Instagram now and are doing weekly 3-question quizzes. This is just being tested through January and will only continue if it seems popular enough, so if this sounds up your alley, head over to our page and participate via our story on Fridays!
- Did you know we’re in Switzerland?! Yes, you read that right; thanks to some new collaborations, Geneva is now on the Urban Archive map. Things over there are still a little new (and written in French), but it’s very exciting, so please go poke around if you want to see more.
- We’re also in talks with the Newberry Library to bring UA to Chicago. This would be another exciting endeavor, and we hope to have more updates in the coming months.
