After the SARS COV-2 pandemic hit last spring, Sarah Allison of Ball State University Libraries took note of an effort by one her colleagues to photograph the now-empty campus. It suggested to her the need to document the experience of the pandemic more systematically. She approached the EDLM to talk about forming a partnership to create a record of the local experience of the lockdown. She also enlisted another Sara (no ‘h’), Sara McKinley of the Muncie Public Library (MPL), for the project. Similar initiatives were popping up in other places all over the world, so this was the local dimension of a wider campaign to create a historical record of the social character of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Each project was a little different. University Libraries set up a portal (here) that has collected several hundred submissions from local residents from all across town, but as its origins suggest, it has especially attracted photos, stories and other material that documents life on campus and the experiences of students, staff, and faculty. The MPL, which collects submissions here, has drawn contributions from the community as well as the campus. It has the added kick of documenting “quarantine cuisine”—what people have been eating while staying home. There are even plans for a cookbook.
Here at EDLM, we have the advantage of a running start. We had been documenting everyday experiences for four years when the pandemic hit, chiefly through day dairies in which our volunteers track their activities, thoughts, and feelings. In April 2020, we asked them to respond to a directive asking how the early stages of the pandemic and lockdown had impacted their daily life (see here). In May we collected our usual diaries (here), which included considerable discussion of both illness and the sense of captivity people were experiencing. We’ve just had another diary day, in late September, and are assembling the collected material now. We expect there to be a good deal more discussion of Covid and its ramifications and we hope to have more to say about the impact of the pandemic on ordinary daily activities and otherwise hidden thoughts and feelings in the coming months.
While plenty of institutions are taking advantage of digital tools to document life during Covid—future historians are going to have a ton of material with which to work—Muncie’s initiative stands out both for its collaborative character and its range of methods. It has attracted the interest of the American Library Association, which has invited the leaders of the three projects to give a presentation to librarians from around the country about what we’re doing. The two Sara(h)’s, along with Pat Collier and Jim Connolly from EDLM, will present next Wednesday, October 7, where we hope to share our ideas and get feedback about how we can continue to document the local pandemic experience. As you’d expect these days, it’s a virtual event—see here for the details and a registration link—and is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act economic stabilization plan. Join us if you can!