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Allegheny College Archivist and alumna Ruth Andel ’85 and Digital Resources Librarian Beau Smith have set out on a project that will chronicle the tumultuous days of the COVID-19 pandemic and the movement to bring social justice and equality to the nation during the spring and summer of 2020.

In May, the project team sent out a call for personal reflections on the lockdowns that resulted from the novel coronavirus outbreak. A month later, it issued a request for input about the protests that erupted nationwide after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The two projects are titled: Allegheny Strong: A Digital Collection of Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic, and Reflections About Social (In)Justice: A Digital Collection.

When researchers a century from now come across the Allegheny collections, “I want them to understand and perhaps empathize with emotions associated with being isolated during ‘social distancing’ and quarantine and to see the pain, mixed emotions, love, and joy of this time of shared trials, triumphs and victories,” says Andel. “I want them to be able to find information beyond numbers, data and facts that I imagine may be readily available then. I want them to see images, words and sound that offer them insight into the humanity behind the pandemic; the feelings, joys and pain, personal realities and stories of our community and its response.”

Several weeks into the project, Andel says she hasn’t received as much material as one might expect, but submissions do include images, essays and poems. “I have heard that of the many other institutions with a call out for pandemic material some have not received any submissions and others are overwhelmed by the response,” says Andel “I hope that we receive enough entries to make a meaningful collection available.”

The team will accept submissions into the fall semester and plans to have the collections available for researchers early in 2021, Andel says.

“It is important that these moments are captured in real time and that we are able to gather materials and thoughts about this crisis that may otherwise disappear before they are preserved,” she says. “I want a way to preserve the human aspect of this time as well as the institutional history that is the mainstay of what my job entails. I would like these collections to be about our community, my community leaving a legacy, a message for the future.

“I currently plan for the final product for the archives to be two digital collections of the material in the college’s institutional repository where it will be available for research. My hope is that a faculty member and/or students will want to use the materials in various projects in the coming years. These may be classroom assignments, research, or other projects I can’t even envision at this moment. Beyond that, I can see the archives, with the assistance of student workers or an intern, preparing an online or wall display to share some of these reflections on the pandemic and social (in)justice issues with other audiences.”

As an example of a submission for the COVID-19 archive, Andel shared a poem by Samuel Reese, a laboratory technician who works in Carr Hall:

20/20 Hearing
Written 5/23/2020 (amended 5/31/2020)

Tinnitus rings brightly – Tires
faintly humming in the distance
Morning eerily quiet in Erie
Global silence
Every face is obscured
Tasks, jobs nonessential
Society distances reluctantly – Hospitals
shining humanity; bravery in the gravest times
Essential.
Ear wax in a time of whack,
Rational/Delusional/$600/Hydroxychloroquine
The nurse, the president, the need, the lie.
You can’t sensationalize an invisible nemesis-
Virus.
Selfishness grips the psyche – Spoiled.
Nonetheless unemployment,
Evidently depression, recession – The Stock Market?
…George Floyd…
Food banks bankrupt,
Record unemployment,
Look, a stimulus check!
For what?
2020
The graduates,
Screwed and skewed,
Equilibrium abandoned,
Actors scripts stolen.
Election year
Buffoons.
…BLM…
Reopen insanity,
Rush into calamity,
Quarantine,
A spike in cases,
Flatten the curve,
Tinnitus obscured; dull – Tires
loudly whirring all around.
New normal-
Wash your hands with soap for 20 seconds,
Avoid crowds and social distance at least 6 feet…
Or not.