Summary
The University of Stirling Archives and Special Collections collected in several ways during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Background
When the Covid-19 pandemic caused national lockdown in March 2020, the University of Stirling Archives and Special Collections developed contemporary collecting projects around the theme of the pandemic.
Challenge
The team wanted to document this period for the future, making it easy for people to participate and to do this in ways which did not negatively affect their wellbeing. Originally, they aimed to represent the Forth Valley geographical area, but later focused more on the University of Stirling’s own community as many staff and students participating lived outside the area.
Approach
The team undertook four focused calls for people to participate. In March 2020 they asked for photographs of how Covid-19 restrictions were manifesting in local communities, or images which people thought typified the period, and for videos of Thursday night “clap for carers/NHS/keyworkers”. Photographs continued to be submitted into March 2022.
During academic year 2020/2021 the team ran a written response project within a wider student wellbeing initiative at the University. They gave out notebooks to students which they could use as diaries. These could (but did not have to) be submitted to the archives. They also facilitated a weekly online session to connect students writing diaries. There was a wider, more casual call out for diaries and creative writing running at the same time.
Beginning in academic year 2021/2022, the team ran an oral history project. The first phase focused on University staff. Interviews were conducted by a team including Archive staff, Art Collection staff and a lecturer in the Division of History, Heritage and Politics. The second phase involved training five student volunteers to interview other students. The team received a contribution from the University Vice Chancellor’s Fund and Divisional support to create an end-of-project film.
Intended aims
The team wanted to complement the official University records in the institutional archive with contemporary, personal accounts, particularly student voices. They were particularly aware of the research gap posed by a lack of information on the 1918 Flu Pandemic in their existing medical archives.
The team wanted to enable people to contribute to the archive in way(s) that worked for them whilst enabling the use of their contributions in the future.
They also wanted to encourage engagement with our service when they were unable to open.
Obstacles and issues
Communications about contributing to the archive were primarily through University social media accounts and newsletters. This affected who responded, causing the team to reframe the project towards University staff and students. Even within the University’s community, methods of engagement could have been more inclusive. For example, the team particularly wanted to include University keyworkers, such as catering and cleaning staff, but communications may not have reached them and the team may have been conducting interviews in a way that wasn’t compatible with their schedules or practicable for them.
The team developed a donation/permissions process, originally by email and eventually using MS Forms. The team also communicated directly with individuals about how archive materials could be used and whether they wanted to restrict usage. It could be time-consuming to ensure that people were able to make an informed decision that was right for them. The team will have a small number of items which will need redaction before they can be used, but envisage this will be manageable.
Calls for participation were open-ended, so collecting ebbed and flowed. For example, running out of space in a physical diary made a natural end and prompted those who wanted to donate the diary to do this, but there was no equivalent for those keeping a diary digitally. The team therefore brought the written response project to an end when their collaborator left the University at the end of the academic year. Identifying an end point to collecting at the beginning could have helped the team to manage their capacity. Being clear in signposting these time parameters to others would have improved project management.
Although the team had suggested specific content to be submitted, they also received donations of other items including copies of Government communications about vaccination or official restrictions, facemasks, and a sanitary kit from the Glasgow climate conference COP26. Many of these came from oral history project participants. They also received some video content for which permissions were unclear. They did not anticipate receiving these additional items of content, but have been able to retain them. With greater capacity they might have specifically asked for such items.
Actual outcomes and outputs
An accessible collection is available for use, including around 200 digital photographs, around 20 other digital items such as student publications and digital diaries, a box of written responses, two boxes of ephemera, and oral history interviews with 21 students and 40 staff. Textual summaries of the interviews are being created, and creative responses including thematic montages arranged into an article and a film, which is intended to be the visual version of the article, enable oral histories to be accessed in different ways. The team aimed to have catalogued most of the collection by the time the film was screened in June 2024, and soft launched the archive with the film.
The oral history project enabled the team to connect with other staff across the University, often for the first time. They have been able to collaborate and engage with them subsequently which would not have been possible before.
Weekly opportunities to engage with student participants helped people to feel connected as well as supporting them in their different contributions. Involving student interviewers in the oral history interviews and summarising meant that students developed their skills and knowledge.
During the oral history project the team was approached by the national Remembering Together project in which all 32 local authorities in Scotland worked with artists to co-create local memorials to the pandemic. They were able to re-engage with some of their interviewees in a workshop for Stirlingshire. The team accessioned the archive of this national project in 2024.
Lessons learned
The team found having a network of people to talk to about their experiences and this collecting was helpful, even if they were not directly involved in the project. It was sometimes difficult to manage capacity as the team navigated the pandemic and different ways of working.
It was important to be aware of the wide range of experiences, emotions and reactions that people were experiencing, including ourselves. The team tried to make gentle requests for people’s time or contributions, providing options for them to participate in ways that were right for them. They found that undertaking the oral history project helped to capture the recent past, as some memories and details had faded faster than might have been anticipated (for example, about particular restrictions). Whilst some participants found the oral history occasionally difficult, everyone was positive about being involved and many commented on how pleased they were that we had initiated the project. For some interviewers, additional opportunities to practice in advance could have ironed out some issues like background noise.
Taking the time to set more careful parameters about timescales or content would have been helpful in managing projects in times of overwhelm for staff, but this was difficult to do in light of uncertainties over when certain restrictions or even the pandemic itself would ‘end’.
The team’s donation and permission process took a little while to get right. It was worth taking time to design a form enabling people to give informed consent and to close content they wanted to.
Next steps
The University Art Collection will exhibit artwork from the Remembering Together project alongside the team’s oral history film as part of the theme Year of Human Experience (2024/2025). They will complete cataloguing for their contemporary collecting projects before cataloguing the Remembering Together Archive.
Further information
Article (and film) about the oral history project by Stephen Bowman, Rosie Al-Mulla, Sarah Bromage, Katharina Pruente, Duncan Armstrong ‘An Unusual Period of Unspecified Length’: A Creative Oral History of the Covid-19 Pandemic (2024)
*Article contains an expletive*