College archivists initiate real-time documentation of pandemic
By Nick Wesman ’20G
The staff of Providence College’s Archives and Special Collections department has started a project it hopes will provide an historical record of how the College community experienced the coronavirus pandemic.
“Archiving Your Story” is a project aimed at documenting how students, faculty, staff, and alumni worked through and felt about the global pandemic.
“As soon as it became apparent that this pandemic would greatly alter the way our campus operates I knew it was something we needed to document as the official record keepers of College history,” said Michelle Chiles, head of Archives and Special Collections.
Chiles is asking for volunteers to donate records of their daily feelings and activities. These materials may take physical or digital forms; it’s entirely up to the individual.
Some early-pledged donors plan to keep daily journals. A few others have proposed interviewing those they live with during social distancing and shelter-in-place orders. The College’s archivist wants to make sure the entire campus community is represented in the collection.
“I wanted to make sure we captured the feeling and impact across the campus and for our whole community,” said Chiles.
Many other colleges and communities around the country are doing similar projects, according to Chiles. It’s not often archivists and curators are able to collect such a significant amount of historical documentation in real time, she said.
“Collecting in real time is far from typical, but this kind of activity isn’t unheard of,” said Chiles. “But I don’t think the PC archives has ever done a real-time collecting project before. I think the closest may be some of the oral history interviews we have in our collections.”
Since so much about the pandemic remains unknown, Archives and Special Collections has yet to put an end date on the project. For the time being, staff will continue to accept and work with contributors.
After the pandemic has passed, Chiles envisions her staff putting together an exhibition at some point in the future, whether it takes a physical or digital form, or a combination of both. Making sure to document the experience is the goal, she said.
“In 10, 20, or 50 years from now, people will want to know what being a student was like or what it was like to run a department from your kitchen table,” she said. “Having first-hand accounts of this period from a wide swath of the College community will help us preserve this time for future scholars.”
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