Bowdoin has completed the first phase of a project to collect the COVID-19-related stories of students, faculty, staff, and administrators for an extensive oral history of how the College navigated the pandemic.
In the spring of 2021, oral historian Andrea L’Hommedieu began interviewing those in the Bowdoin community who helped steer the College through the pandemic.
An initial list of thirty-four interviews subjects, including President Clayton Rose, trustees, deans, faculty, and students, grew to fifty and now the process to transcribe those conversations has begun.
The stories and information—both the audio recordings and their transcriptions—will be archived by the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives.
Though the material will initially be restricted, all the interviews eventually will be publicly accessible.
President Rose said the College wants to ensure it has a comprehensive historical record of the institution in an unprecedented time.
"This has been a profound moment in our 227 years," he added, "and we are obligated to accurately and thoroughly compile, organize, and preserve a record of the issues and challenges we faced, the decisions we took and the processes we used to reach them, and the outcomes and experiences in the period between the late winter of 2020 and the start of school in the fall of 2021."
While archivists can retain relevant College records that document the pandemic response, Rose said that including an oral history is key to creating a thorough account of events.
Andrea L'Hommedieu is the director of the department of oral history at the University of South Carolina. Previously, she was the Muskie Archives' oral historian at Bates College. From 2007 to 2011, she directed the George J. Mitchell oral history project for Bowdoin. Her father, Glenn Frankenfield (1938-2021), graduated from Bowdoin in 1960.
Bowdoin Digital Archivist Meagan Doyle is overseeing this project, as well as the Library's other efforts to document the pandemic.
This includes encouraging members of the Bowdoin community to contribute personal stories "in their own words."
"It has been an important historic moment, and we want to document it from all angles," Doyle said.
