The British Library Oral History team has compiled a guide to remote oral history interviewing based on their experiences, with input from the British Oral History Society. It is hosted by the British Oral History Society and authored by Charlie Morgan, Oral History Archivist, British Library, [charlie.morgan[@]bl.uk] with Rob Perks, Mary Stewart, Camille Johnston (British Library Oral History, London), with thanks to Tom Lean (University of York), and Adam Tovell (British Library Sound Archive).
Author Archives: men2022
Touching Hearts, Not Hands: A Call to Collect Creative Responses to Coronavirus through Poems, Songs, Stories, and Videos
In a human response to the frightening and sometimes deadly virus, City Lore is collecting and archiving creative responses to the pandemic. They have started a group poem – It Takes a Pandemic. Poet Bob Holman (United States of Poetry, Language Matters) has joined forces with City Lore to curate and organize the material with us. Send your lines to jake@citylore.org with the heading It Takes a Pandemic. By submitting lines, you agree to let us share them. Click here to read the full ongoing poem. Please send other poems, videos, images or screen shots created by you or others with the heading Touching Hearts, Not Hands to jake@citylore.org. If you send materials by others let City Lore know whom you received it from if possible, and let them know if you have permission to share.
COVID Diaries POC
The West Harlem Art Fund launches COVID Diaries POC —a poignant audio series documenting the impact of the corona virus through interview and memoir. COVID Diaries POC collaboratively captures the reactions of People of Color living at the effect of this global pandemic.
Teen students from Exalt Youth will generate discussion questions that family members, neighbors and other participants will respond to using a recording feature on their phones. Those interviews will be archived and woven into an outdoor botanical installation and soundscape performance piece designed by artists Nadia DeLane and Austin Arrington.
According to Savona Bailey McClain, Executive Director and Chief Curator for the West Harlem Art Fund, “It is vital that Black and Brown people share their thoughts and experiences firsthand. Too often others interpret the feelings of our communities for us without ever talking to us. COVID Diaries POC offers an opportunity for our communities to heal and process in real-time.”
Posterity will include the voices of African, Latino and Caribbean Americans as historical actors and not as victims.
Exalt demonstrates the power of effective educational engagement as a viable alternative to criminal justice involvement for today’s young people.
To participate, email westharlemartfund12@gmail.com
Bronx Covid-19 Project
The Bronx Covid-19 Project is an initiative of the Bronx African American History Project, one of the largest and most respected community based oral history initiatives in the United States. The goal is to capture the voices of Bronx residents, in audio and video form, about how their families, communities and workplaces have been affected by the Global Pandemic which has spread through the Bronx with deadly force
Recording these voices is of especial importance because the people of the Bronx, many of whom live on the edge of poverty and work in “essential occupations,” have experienced one of the highest fatality rates from COVID-19 in the entire world. In the face of mounting personal tragedies and an overwhelmed heath care system, large numbers of Bronx residents still to go to work every day via public transportation because as nurses, hospital orderlies, home health aides, grocery and maintenance workers, and buses and subway drivers, their jobs continue even as much of the economy has shut down.. Adding to the pain, social distancing, the preferred strategy for reducing COVID-10th impact, is difficult when large numbers of Bronx residents, live in crowded households containing multi-generational families.
At a time when there is growing outrage about the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black people, poor people, and immigrants, recording the voices of Bronx residents, the vast majority of whom fall into at least one of those categories, represents an act of resistance as well as an affirmation of our collective conscience.
The students, scholars, and community leaders recording these voices will do so in a manner that assures everyone’s health and safety. They will also not post any interviews until interviewees give their consent both before and after the interviews are conducted.
If we are ever to change the conditions which have imposed such disproportionate pain on Bronx residents, we must allow them to speak for themselves. The Bronx COVID-19 Project aims to do just that.
Trump is ignoring the lessons of 1918 flu pandemic that killed millions, historian says
The Grim History of Counting the Dead During Plagues
Dear Leader: Lessons on leadership in the time of pandemic
Analyzing the Past in the Present: The Black Death, COVID-19, and the Ursinus Quest
An essay by capstone seminar students at Ursinus College that attempts to answer the question: is it possible that studying the Black Death can teach us something about how to handle our current situation?
Letters from 6′ Away: South Asian American Experiences During COVID-19
A project of the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), Letters from 6′ Away seeks to document South Asian experiences of this moment by giving contributors prompts to follow to write a letter to themselves one year in the future. The letter will be included in SAADA’s archive (with permission) and will be sent to the contributor via mail or email one year from now.
A/P/A Voices: A COVID-19 Public Memory Project
The Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, in collaboration with Tomie Arai, Lena Sze, Vivian Truong, and Diane Wong, is in the early stages of developing A/P/A Voices: A COVID-19 Public Memory Project, a public memory project related to COVID-19 and A/P/A communities. For more information, read the framing statement. If you are interested in being involved, please email apa.archives@nyu.edu.