Library of Congress Launches New Website for Americans to Share COVID-19 Stories

From the Library of Congress:

The Library of Congress announced today that it has launched the COVID-19 Archive Activation website, in collaboration with StoryCorps, to encourage all Americans to share their COVID-19 stories, or interview others about their pandemic experiences. Stories submitted through the Archive Activation website will be deposited into the collections of the American Folklife Center and made accessible at archive.StoryCorps.org.

By creating a tool to collect and preserve Americans’ pandemic experiences, the Library of Congress is honoring those who lost loved ones to COVID-19, those who worked on the frontlines of the pandemic, and those who were, and continue to be, impacted during this unprecedented time in American history.

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The COVID-19 Archive Activation website is part of the COVID-19 American History Project— a Congressionally mandated initiative to document and archive Americans’ experiences with the pandemic. In addition, the American Folklife Center has contracted professional oral historians to document the stories of frontline workers and created a research guide to COVID-19 collections. Key to the COVID-19 Archive Activation page is the American Folklife Center’s partnership with StoryCorps — a nonprofit organization founded in 2003 to collect stories that illuminate people’s humanity.

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To share how you experienced the pandemic on the COVID-19 Archive Activation website, follow the prompts on this page to record your story or to interview someone else. The page includes tips and considerations for recording your story and a list of questions to prepare for interviews. Once finished, you can find your story, or that of others, on the StoryCorps Archive.

Learn More, Read the Complete Announcement

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