The site prompts people to share something about the artefact that they are uploading – an image, document, audio recording or video – and what it means to them. The archive is open to submissions from people around the world to encourage the development of a diverse and creative collection of accounts. “So we are giving people access to that dimension of human reaction that is usually lost to historians.” “That’s what I always lament about not having in the eighteenth-century archive – that black box-like record of how different people responded,” says Associate Professor O’Donnell. The project takes its name from Daniel Defoe’s 1722 novel on the 1665 Plague in London, ‘A Journal of the Plague Year.’ Picture: Edmund Evans/Wellcome Collection
“It occurred to me that we were preservers of the things future historians would very much want to know about,” she says.Īccounts of past pandemics have become important works of literature – like Samuel Pepys’ diaries that provide a first-hand account of the 1665 outbreak of bubonic plague in London.Ī Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe’s 1722 novel of the 1665 outbreak, which may have been based on his own uncle’s diaries, inspired the name of the project.Īccounts like these are rich in fascinating historical detail but they are limited in the voices they present. How have plagues and pandemics influenced the arts?
“We’re always living in history, but usually we have the luxury of not being aware of it,” says Arizona State Associate Professor Catherine O’Donnell who along with colleague Associate Professor Mark Tebeau, came up with the idea for a COVID-19 archive. Led by researchers from Arizona State University, A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of COVID-19 is an online archive that anyone can submit content to. Picture: Getty ImagesĪnticipating the needs of the future, historians around the world have joined together to create a live digital archive of peoples’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 outbreak is a momentous time in history and ordinary people around the world are recording their experiences and feelings, whether online or in diaries, whether in text, audio recordings, stills or video.īut when future generations seek to make sense of what is happening now where will they go? The archive will help future historians make sense of what is happening now. Whole cities and countries in lock down, an economic crash comparable with the Great Depression, and a health crisis the likes of which the rich world hasn’t experienced for a hundred years.
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