Developing a digital archive for symbolic resources in urban environments - the Latina Project

The project described in this paper was funded to establish the foundation for a digital archival resource for researchers interested in the way people interact with urban environments through graphic communications. The research was internally funded by Loughborough University as part of its Research Challenge Programme and involved two members of academic staff and two library staff. Two PhD students also participated. The archive consists of a small number of images and will act as a proof of concept, not only for this project but also for current and future funding applications. It is hoped that an extended archive will be useful not only to visual communication researchers, but also historians, architects, town planners and others. This paper will describe the data collection process, the challenges facing the project team in data curation and data documentation, and the creation of the pilot archive