Tell Your Story: Library’s COVID memory project nears close
Last year Sonoma County Library launched “Sonoma Responds: A Community Memory Archive” to document the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice activism, wildfires and the presidential election. Community members are invited to contribute digital submissions to the project’s English/Spanish online portal before it officially closes for submissions on August 31, 2021.
“The stories we leave behind will shape the way future generations understand this period in history. All of us have a story to tell,” explained Zayda Delgado, Special Collections Librarian and one of the project leads.
Digital submissions of all types are welcome. Anonymous submissions are accepted. Community members can:
- Upload images, videos, recordings, writings
- Respond to reflective prompts
- Nominate online content for a web archive
- Nominate material for the physical archive
The archive has collected photographs, videos, letters, zines, signs, blog and social media posts, and creative works such as novels, poetry and drawings, even an album of coronavirus-related songs. Explore the archive through the library’s digital collections.
A special feature of the project is the web archive that captures and preserves online content, “snapshots in time” of local blogs, news, YouTube videos and websites such as the Google doc “Black, Native, POC, and POC-immigrant Owned Restaurants and Businesses in SOCO” created by Santa Rosa teacher Kelly Cramer. The library’s efforts to preserve this material is part of the Internet Archive’s Community Webs program supporting public libraries around the country to build and maintain web archives reflective of local culture and events.
Through a collaboration with Sonoma State University’s Center for Community Engagement, the library is archiving over 600 student submissions. A broad range of classes including communications, education, history, chemistry, nursing, psychology and sociology participated in this initiative.
“At a time when community-based work was slowing down, we expanded, and students in over 40 service-learning classes were able to contribute to the historical record about their experiences during covid, the racial justice movement, the election, and the fires,” said Merith Weisman, Director of Community Engagement and Strategic Initiatives.
These materials will be publicly accessible by late 2021.
The California Library Association recently recognized Sonoma Responds with Best in Show at the PRExcellence Awards, stating it was “a timely and meaningful project for this unusual time.”
To tell your story and become part of the historical record, visit sonomalibrary.org/sonoma-responds-community-archive.
