College of DuPage launches DuPage Community COVID-19 Digital Archive

College of DuPage in partnership with DuPage County invites local residents to share their personal experiences living through the COVID-19 pandemic. The DuPage Community COVID-19 Digital Archive is a compilation of unique and unexpected stories of finding togetherness while separated, strategies to cope and eventually heal in one historical account made available for future generations.

Community members are encouraged to submit personal stories about family life, work, school and relationships, along with photos, drawings, poems, short stories, videos, audio recordings, social media posts and other digital items to help preserve the memory of this unprecedented time in history.

"This is an exciting endeavor for us," said COD Archivist Jenny Dunbar. "While historians can usually find facts about historical events, it is the stories of people's daily life and their feelings that provide a fuller context."

College of DuPage President Dr. Brian Caputo said the archive presents local residents an opportunity to create a historic account of COVID-19's impact on DuPage County, offering their unique perspectives on the many ways the pandemic has altered everyday life.

"Technology has given us the ability to document much of this experience so that future generations can examine how we continued to connect as a community while socially distanced," he said.

Unlike many archival collections that document events decades or centuries in the past, this collection provides a unique opportunity to archive the pandemic in real time, said DuPage County Chairman Dan Cronin.

"The COVID-19 pandemic will be long-remembered in DuPage County, and an archive collection will prove valuable for future generations to not only remember what happened but know how to proceed if something similar happens again," he said. "We have the unique opportunity to archive the pandemic in real-time. This ability allows for a robust collection filled with detailed information. DuPage County businesses, organizations, and community members have been affected in different ways and this project is an opportunity to share collective experiences."

This project was created in collaboration between the college's Office of Community Relations, the COD Archive and the COD Library, with additional support provided by the College's Marketing and Communications Department.

For more information and to submit an item to the Digital Archive, visit cod.edu/coronavirus/covid-digital-archive.aspx. For further questions, contact Dunbar at dunbarj412@cod.edu.