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COVID-19 Documentation projects
SRMA Institutions are working to collect documentation of this historic time! We’ve gathered some information about current initiatives to do so. We will continue to update this information as things develop, so please let us know if you know of other COVID-19 documentation initiatives in our membership area (Colorado and Wyoming) or if you have updates or corrections to any of the information below.
Aspen Historical Society
With an uncertain future ahead, the importance of storytelling feels more essential than ever. With that in mind, we’re asking you, our community, to help capture history in the making with “Our Digital Diary,” a new community oral history project! Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Historical Society are partnering to collect and memorialize your stories from these historic circumstances. Interview your family to tell us your quirky quarantine story, what you’re feeling and seeing, what motivates you, what scares you, or what the day is like outside your window. Record and send in an audio clip to be preserved in perpetuity in the Aspen Historical Society Archive.
Colorado Mesa University
CMU Special Collections and Archives is accepting journals or other records of our community’s experiences with the pandemic.
Colorado State University
Colorado State University Libraries Archives & Special Collections’ campus-wide project encourages all CSU community members to document their personal experiences during the COVID-19 outbreak and contribute them to the University Archive. Using any available method, students, faculty, and staff are invited to record their stories about the transition to remote instruction and learning, studying and working from home, the impact of closing residence halls and other campus services, and efforts to stay connected with friends and family.
For more information: https://lib.colostate.edu/find/contribute-to-the-covid-19-archive/
Denver Public Library
Documenting Metro Denver Neighborhoods During the COVID-19 Quarantine
In an effort to document the impact of COVID-19 on Metro Denver Neighborhoods, the staff of the Western History and Genealogy Department (WHG) at the Denver Public Library will embark on a project to capture history in the making. Staff members will photograph and collect materials that reflect how the stay-at-home and social distancing orders have impacted our neighborhoods; including small businesses, restaurants, parks, and churches. The goal of the project is to represent a broad range of neighborhoods and diverse perspectives. Material will be collected until the end of April and shared online by mid-May.
Douglas County Libraries Archives & Local History
The Douglas County Libraries Archives & Local History is collecting Douglas County residents stories and experiences of COVID-19, as well as materials related to COVID-19 in the county. More information and the survey for residents can be found at: https://archives.dcl.org/
History Colorado
History Colorado is collecting stories from the community. They ask:
- How are you navigating work and family needs?
- Has your place of work reduced hours, or been forced to close?
- What steps is your family taking to prevent the virus’s spread?
- What will you remember about this moment?
For more information: https://www.historycolorado.org/covid-19
Iliff School of Theology
The Iliff Archive and Special Collections is starting a project to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Iliff community. We would love for students, faculty, and staff to share your experience about how COVID-19 has not only impacted your professional/student life, but also your personal life. Our mission is to add your stories to our public, online digital repository, as well as preserve them in our archives for future research. For more information: https://library.iliff.edu/covid-19-archive-project/
Lake County Public Library
Lake County Public Library is looking for volunteers to keep a daily journal during the pandemic and submit their writings to our archive. Future historians and researchers will want to know how this epidemic affected daily life in Leadville, and this is a chance to help them out!
For more information: https://lakecountypubliclibrary.org/localhistory/journalproject
Louisville Historical Museum
The Louisville Historical Museum needs your help in order to document current events for future generations. The Museum staff has put together a Louisville COVID-19 Experience Kit with survey questions that residents can use in multiple ways, including as a contribution to historical record, as prompts for a journal, as an educational activity for children and students, as a family history record, and as topics for discussion around the family dinner table. The Museum encourages residents to take the survey multiple times, as people may find that their responses change over time.
Please help the Historical Museum in its effort to document the community’s current experiences as they are happening, or use the prompts and questions for your own personal exploration of history in the making.
For more information: https://www.louisvilleco.gov/government/departments/museum-home/louisville-covid-19-experience
Loveland Museum
The Museum is interested in hearing your stories about how you are dealing with the day-to-day during this unusual time. If you have the opportunity, please share the below information with your memberships, friends and other community groups. The more stories and images we can collect, the more we can reflect on our strength as a community in the future!
Share Your Story – COVID-19
- In this history-making circumstance, the Museum invites residents to make their own history, literally, by sharing stories and photos of ways the COVID-19 pandemic affects them. Find the story share here: https://www.lovelandmuseumgallery.org/share-your-story-covid-19/
- The online form allows users to submit stories and photos, and to grant their permission to use them as part of the Loveland Museum collection for exhibit and research purposes.
- The Loveland Museum invites you to be a champion of history and participate in this collective work to preserve the Loveland Pandemic experience.
The Archive at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery
Fort Collins, like so many other places around the world, is reacting and adapting to the widespread COVID-19 health crisis. We at Fort Collins Museum of Discovery are seeking to document the impact in our community through your stories, observations, images, sound files, and moving images. We will be taking digital submissions throughout the COVID-19 health crisis, and over time, we plan to collect objects, artwork, interviews, journals, and other items to help tell the story of this time.
For more information: https://fcmod.org/making-history/
University of Colorado Boulder
Documenting Community, 2020 Digital Archive invites CU students, as student archivists, to participate virtually in the creation of a new archival collection to be housed in the CU Boulder Libraries Special Collections, Archives & Preservation Department. We hope to capture, in real time and virtually, the ways that COVID-19 is affecting our personal and family lives, our university community, and our public communities more broadly. We plan to accept electronic submissions from three groups of CU students in their roles as student archivists:
- Student employees from Special Collections, Archives & Preservation (SCAP)
- Student employees from the University Libraries
- Students of CU educators with whom we are collaborating on this project through our instruction program
For more information: https://www.colorado.edu/libraries/libraries/norlin-library/special-collections-archives-preservation/collections/documenting-community
University of Northern Colorado
UNC’s Archives and Special Collections is acquiring personal experiences of the Bears community during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We want journal entries, audio and video recordings, photographs, scrapbooks, web content, and more from UNC students, faculty, staff, administrators, and alumni. We will also interview individuals, virtually or via phone call, to record your stories as oral and video histories. Details about the project and how to participate can be found here: https://libguides.unco.edu/coronavirus_archive.
UW’s COVID-19 Collection Project records community narratives through guided journal entries, surveys, website captures, correspondence, news feed collecting, and free-form creative submissions that document the impact of COVID-19 at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, and Wyoming as a whole. For more information: https://www.uwyo.edu/ahc/covid-19-collecting.html