Taking into account the planetary nature of the new Coronavirus pandemic and the proliferation of covid-related oral history projects around the globe, the International Oral History Association established the COVID-19 International Network in mid April 2020 in the midst of lockdown in order to capture the truly global character of the pandemic and to create a space for oral historians around the globe to exchange experiences, find feedback and develop ideas about the unprecedented nature of the Covid-19 related changes and challenges affecting our societies. Those interested can send an email to rvboes@gmail.com to be added to their mailing list.
Category Archives: Oral History
The Coronavirus Pandemic: Oral History and Archives, Projects and Resources
The Coronavirus Pandemic – Oral History and Archives, Projects and Resources
This resource guide includes links to existing projects and how-to resources for New Yorkers who want to create collecting, oral history, and other community history projects during the Covid-19 crisis. It was compiled by Madison Marlow of the Manhattan Borough President’s office and Robert Snyder, Manhattan Borough Historian, and based on resources shared during meetings of historians and community activists organized by the Borough President’s office.
Advice on remote oral history interviewing during the Covid-19 pandemic
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).
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.
“How Are We Going to Look Back on This Time?” Oral Historians Record Daily Life During COVID-19.
the covid-19 oral history project
The COVID-19 Oral History Project is a rapid response oral history focused on archiving the lived experience of the COVID-19 epidemic. Based at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), this project emerged from the collective efforts of graduate students in the IUPUI Public History and American Studies Programs. The COVID-19 Oral History Project is housed at the IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute. It is a partner project with The Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of Covid19.
This project is designed so that professional researchers and the broader public can create and upload their oral histories to our database. They are seeking researchers with experience conducting oral histories or ethnographies to help conduct a series of formal oral histories and also offering a series of workshops to train members of the public to conduct oral histories in their communities.
All the data that participants collect and produce will be open access, open source and shared with researchers and the public through the IUPUI Library and the Covid-19 Archive.
The dataset will serve as
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an historical archive that compiles oral histories about the experience of living through the COVID-19 pandemic.
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a tool that allows individuals and communities to express their understandings, hopes, beliefs, and values about the COVID-19 pandemic.
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a resource to help researchers, policy makers, activists, artists, and communities interpret and respond to current and future pandemics.
NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive
Co-directors: Amy Starecheschi, Denise Milstein, Ryan Hagen, Mary Marshall Clark
PI: Peter Bearman
A team of sociologists, oral historians, and anthropologists at Columbia University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) and the Oral History Archives at Columbia is building an archive documenting New York City’s experience of the pandemic. The archive focuses on New York—a city of neighborhoods—to illuminate and document the social structure of the pandemic. The project combines sociology and oral history to create a rich, composite picture of the struggle against COVID-19 as it evolves over the next year and beyond.
For this project, they are conducting video interviews with each narrator three times over the course of twelve months. The voices from these interviews are enriched by written diaries chronicling daily life during the pandemic and survey data tracking the demography of participants and their social lives.
The public archive that results from this project will be available to researchers, health workers and advocates, historians, artists, and policymakers in 2022, although they expect to share some of our material before then.
Since late March, the team of thirty oral history interviewers has been working to record initial interviews with two hundred New Yorkers, including doctors, nurses, home health aides, funerary workers, doulas, parents, homeless people, organizers, artists, immigrants, teachers, other essential workers, public officials, and everyday New Yorkers of all kinds. At the same time, they are gathering chronicles and survey responses from a broad sample of the city’s population.
If you are interested in participating in this project by filling out a survey, writing chronicles, or participating in interviews, this info sheet will tell you how. You can also reach the team by email at covid19archive@gmail.com
Queens Memory Covid-19 Project
A collaboration between the Queens Public Library and Urban Archive, the Queens Memory Covid-19 Project seeks to document the experiences of Queens residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.
4 Ways to Contribute:
- Leave a message on their storyline at 1-855-QNS-LOVE (767-5683). In your recording, please include:A. The spelling and pronunciation of your first and last name
B. Your age
C. A way to contact you
D. A description of where you are - Tag the project in your social media posts by using @queensmemory and #QueensCOVID
- Use this webform to send in an account of your experience in Queens. This can be captured through writing, photography, sound, or video recordings.
- Use this webform to send in oral history interview recordings.
Please note that if you are between the ages of 14 and 18, you must have your guardian’s consent to participate in this program. Children aged 13 or younger may not participate in this program.
Our Streets, Our Stories
In an unprecedented time of stress and resilience, many Brooklynites are at the front lines of responding to the coronavirus crisis, and many more are encountering a new normal, as we adjust to changing work, education, housing, and even access to basic amenities.
That’s why Brooklyn Public Library is calling for submissions to its local oral history archive, Our Streets, Our Stories. At this moment in time, we have an opportunity to collect testimonies and memories of the crisis as it is unfolding so that future Brooklynites can understand the pandemic at a local level. If you are a healthcare worker, a teacher, a student, a parent, a community member, a first responder, an essential worker, a senior, or if you are incarcerated or have a loved one who is incarcerated, we want to hear from you. If you are a Brooklynite, this story is your story.
How it works: To contribute your story, or to suggest a community member for an interview, email ososproject@bklynlibrary.org or call (917) 426-1271 and let us know the best way to reach you. A member of BPL staff will set up a time with you to do a remote interview. All you will need is a phone number or a laptop with internet connection. Interviews can last a few minutes or up to an hour, depending on your interest and availability. After it is cataloged by our librarians, your story will be available online, and archived in our permanent collection under a Creative Commons license.