The George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, housed in the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, doesn't just protect ancient manuscripts and textbooks. Every day, its staff are collecting materials being produced in the current day—including online articles and social media posts—knowing that in the future they will be valuable for the window they open to bygone times.
That preservation instinct is perhaps more essential today than ever. During the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, Digital Archivist Meagan Doyle is collecting College records, from emails sent to the Bowdoin community by President Rose to department newsletters. She's also set up web archiving crawls of Bowdoin’s COVID-related webpages.
"We haven’t had a situation—a crisis or emergency—where we have tried to document what is happening right now, partly because with some historical moments you don’t understand their importance until after the fact," she said. "But this is a clear historical moment."
But Doyle doesn't just want to safeguard "official" records—though these are valuable. She also wants to include personal stories from the Bowdoin community.
"At the archives, we’re always interested in getting the official story, but we also try to get individual experiences of people," she said. She noted that some of the preserved early nineteenth-century journals by Bowdoin students provide fascinating—and otherwise unknowable—details of campus life.
To encourage students, staff, faculty, and alumni to share their stories, or to help others share their accounts, Doyle launched on Monday a public website with guidance and tips.
She gives people two ways to contribute. They can share their own journal, prose, artwork, or email correspondence—"any form of expression"—whether it's on paper or in a digital form.
Or they can help others narrate their stories by conducting an interview with them and donating the recording to the archives. People interested in this option can volunteer with a partner or be paired with someone they don't know in a kind of matchmaking setup.
To prompt people to think about different aspects of the crisis, Doyle has come up with a list of questions and ideas to write or inquire about.
"I think this is hopefully leaving space for reflection and encouraging connection during these strange times," she said.
