Category Archives: Collecting

Community Survey on COVID-19 Crisis

The History Center in Tompkins County and the Cornell University Archives are collaborating in an ongoing archival collections project related to the impacts of COVID-19. To this end, we have created a survey to field responses from the Tompkins County and Cornell community on how people have been experiencing and reflecting on the COVID-19 crisis. While many of us are still processing the events unfolding, we would like to ask those who are willing to share to please take a few moments to fill out our coronavirus survey.
 
When answering these questions or talking about these subjects, consider them in the context of your personal life, family, daily activities, and community. Your responses will be compiled into an archival collection documenting the responses to the COVID-19 outbreak at Cornell and the local repercussions of the disease in Tompkins County. Documenting how the community has grappled with the challenges of this crisis will help scholars, future researchers, and our descendants understand what this tumultuous time was like.
 
For more information about this project, contact the archivist at The History Center in Tompkins County, Donna Eschenbrenner, archives@thehistorycenter.net or the Cornell University Archivist, Evan Earle, efe4@cornell.edu. To learn more about The History Center’s mission, visit their website at https://thehistorycenter.net/.

Social Distancing: Stories from the Union Community

Social Distancing: Stories from the Union Community captures the unique experiences from students, faculty, staff, and community members of Union College, Schenectady, and the region during the COVID-19 pandemic. The site is created and maintained by Schaffer Library in partnership with the Minerva Programs.

The site includes information on Union’s response to the pandemic as it progresses, maps and stories about the Union community’s responses, library and college resources, and the opportunity for community members to contribute their own stories to a community archive. 

 

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

CUNY Distance Learning Archive

This project documenting the transition to online instruction at CUNY during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic welcomes submissions from the CUNY community of the following nature:

  • Personal narratives reflecting on distance learning, especially during the abrupt shift to online education midway through the Spring 2020 semester. (Here are some suggested questions if you’re having trouble.)
  • Official email communications from CUNY Senior Administrators describing the university’s move to online teaching.
  • Documentation of online learning experiences (photos, narratives, screenshots).
  • Learning resources developed during the transition.
  • Links to social media threads/hashtags/accounts that capture events in real time
  • Email related to the move to online teaching (with express and documented permission of the sender)

Send contributions via our online form below or email your contribution to us at cunyarchive@gmail.com

COVID-19: A Long Island Journal

Molloy College Special Collections is creating an Archive of materials to document this challenging time. They seek journal or diary entries, reflections, photographs, videos, voice memos, audio recordings, and other digital evidence relating to the impact of COVID-19. Handwritten journals and physical works can also be sent in. Examples of experiences may include working from home, the shift to online learning, social distancing, and self-quarantine.

Members of the Molloy family and the greater Long Island community can contribute their experiences using this Google Form (use this MS Form with your molloy.edu account) For questions, please contact Christine Yu, Associate Archivist, at cyu@molloy.edu.

The goal of this collection is to preserve the events and experiences important to individuals and communities in our area so that future generations may learn from our shared journey.

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:

  1. 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
  2. Tag the project in your social media posts by using @queensmemory and #QueensCOVID
  3. Use this webform to send in an account of your experience in Queens. This can be captured through writing, photography, sound, or video recordings.
  4. 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.

OneWorld COVID-19 Special Collection

The Museum of Chinese in America has established the OneWorld Collection to feature acquisitions of a wide range of artifacts, including but not limited to photographs, letters, articles, journals, messages, notes, certificates, medical records, videos, and oral histories of Chinese Americans during this time. This collection will not only feature stories of community efforts but also highlight experiences of individuals and families during these unprecedented times.

They invite Chinese Americans to send a write up and photos to oneworld@mocanyc.org, with the subject line Submission for MOCA OneWorld COVID-19 Special Collection. Explain how you, your association, or your community group organized to help the current crisis. Share a story that is one you believe should be recorded and documented. Please provide your contact information or that of your organization’s or community’s, including full name, email address, phone number, and mailing address.

Work and COVID-19 Web Archiving

Cornell University Library’s Metadata Services, Catherwood Library, and Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives presents a collection of national and international web pages documenting the responses by unions, governments, nonprofits, employer consultants, and the textile industry to labor and employment challenges raised by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

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.

Documenting COVID-19 Project (Amistad Research Center)

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Amistad Research Center is launching the Documenting COVID-19 Project to chronicle aspects of the pandemic’s effects around the world.

We invite community members to contribute original digital content, such as images, sound recordings and video related to public signage, contributor-generated and public art, and similar forms of expression.

Documenting COVID-19 Project Team
Phillip Cunningham, Head of Research Services
Brenda Flora, Curator of Moving Images and Recorded Sound
Hsiu-Ann Tom, Digital Archivist