Documenting a Pandemic

UNO Libraries’ Archives & Special Collections knows that voices during the pandemic are at risk of being lost without a concerted collecting effort.  

What began as a project aimed at student workers soon expanded and developed a new goal of gathering a wide variety of materials from the Omaha community that chronicles COVID-19 experiences. Historically, the remembrances of everyday people have not always been gathered carefully during times of crises. UNO’s archivists want to avoid losing the diverse voices of our community, especially voices that have previously been ignored in archives and the historical record. 

Journal entries, reflections, interviews, photo essays, drawings, plays, and other creative forms of documenting this moment are welcome and will be extremely important for future researchers in understanding how Nebraskans reacted to this pandemic and what we experienced. We would love for you to create and donate something that reflects your own experience during this time.  

Have questions about the process? Want to learn more? Contact the project co-lead archivists Lori Schwartz lschwartz@unomaha.edu and Claire Du Laney cdulaney@unomaha.edu in UNO Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections. To browse the collection, visit Documenting COVID-19 in Omaha.