Archiving the Covid-19 pandemic

The next stage in making a Covid specific collection is to source the material from the community. Remember that Covid related material may be highly emotionally charged, and the form of this request should be carefully considered. There are three main routes:

• Appeals: asking people to give you things which exist already, like images, documents, objects and records
• Calls to actions: asking people to create things for your collection, including surveys, questionnaires, artwork and oral history
• Collecting yourself: gathering material directly from the public realm - for instance publications and social media

Appeals

Firstly, you could make a direct appeal to the public, or to a specific sector of the public. Appeals like this are suitable when the material already exists, and you just need the right people to know that they can offer it to you.

You need to ask a specific enough question, so that the things you are offered match your Covid collecting statement.

You'll need to think about what you want, considering things like:

• How extensive do you want the collection to be?
• Do you want a sample of the material, or the whole lot?
• If you're accepting many items, do you need the items themselves to be smaller in size? For example, are you asking for a short caption with people's photographs rather than an essay? If so, should you specify how many words?

Call to Action

Another approach is a 'call to action'. This is when you ask people to create material especially for your archive. For example, this might be by:

• Taking photographs
• Writing a diary
• Completing a survey
• Recording interviews.

The important thing is that this is material which doesn't already exist, and you are asking people to spend time creating it. You must therefore be clear, specific, and engaging in your communication.

You will also need to make sure that what you are asking for is meaningful for future researchers of the pandemic. How able you are to do this yourselves depends on the expertise available in your group. For example, a heritage group that wants to consider more creative options might find the advice of an archivist, a museum curator or a creative consultant useful.

In either case you need to set out your technical expectations. This could be around size and quantity, or for digital material it might be file type or resolution. For oral histories you will need to provide detailed instructions, and probably be able to borrow or lend out recording equipment.

Creating good appeals & calls to action

A good call to action should:

• Catch attention - 'we want you'
• Be specific - to do exactly what?
• Set a time frame - when by?
• Remember: 'who, what, when, where, how & why'

For example:
"Little Snoring History Group wants you to send us your Covid memories: download our postcard template in November to tell us what you were doing, thinking and feeling on 23 March 2020, when the first lockdown was announced"

The next step is to get your appeal or call to action out to your audience. You can use a range of media outlets depending on what reach you are looking for:

• Very local - eg, a parish newsletter, group mailing list or village forum
• Across a slightly larger locality - using borough or town resources, via the regional press for instance or a local radio station
• Open - via social media, national press and anywhere else you can

Collecting yourself

Finally, you can collect yourself, ie gathering material directly from the public realm - for instance from publications or social media. This requires staff and/or volunteer time, and a clear policy. The opportunities and pitfalls are covered more deeply under social media.