One week after Governor Walz issued a statewide stay-at-home order, the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) launched History is Now: COVID-19 Health Crisis, a digital collecting initiative to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Minnesota. The project aimed to collect digital submissions of text stories, digital media, and web links, and to make select content available in real-time on the MNHS blog
https://www.mnhs.org/blog/historyisnow.
Six weeks after launching the initiative, the entire project team was furloughed due to COVID-19. Unrest would erupt throughout the Twin Cities just one week later in response to the murder of George Floyd, leaving the institution bereft of curatorial and archival insight and response.
This session examines contemporary collecting during unprecedented times through a candid exploration of the challenges experienced by MNHS staff when faced with a global pandemic and civil uprising. Presenters will discuss:
- technological and ethical considerations for building digital collections that document traumatic experiences;
- developing processes and collaborative workflows while working from home, including developing collecting tools and outreach methods;
- successes and challenges in attempts to collaborate with external stakeholders and communities;
- re-examining collecting practices in response to current trends and changes in capacity.
