College of DuPage COVID-19 Digital Archive Illustrates Daily Life

The DuPage Community COVID-19 Digital Archive, created by the Community Excellence team at College of DuPage in partnership with DuPage County, has gathered dozens of materials demonstrating community members’ experiences and personal reflections during the world-wide pandemic.

Submissions to date comprise an array of subjects from day-to-day life during the pandemic, including people making protective masks, photos demonstrating the new normal, birthday celebrations, local public spaces empty during the lockdown, a socially-distanced graduation ceremony and artwork inspired by the pandemic and resulting lockdown. Members of the College community also have provided a number of contributions such as a carpool karaoke performance; “CCMA Creates,” a series of videos providing art-oriented activities to keep people engaged and entertained; and a virtual performance of Roy Hargrove’s “Strasbourg/St. Denis” by members of the DuPage Community Jazz Ensemble.

View the archive.

COD Archivist Jenny Dunbar encourages community members to submit any materials or thoughts that illustrate the changes they are experiencing in their daily life during this extraordinary time. She said the archive will fulfill an important role in years to come.

“In the future, historians, researchers, scholars and public policy experts will want to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said. “By contributing to the DuPage Community COVID-19 Digital Archive, people are leaving a legacy of invaluable primary source material to future generations documenting what life was like during a worldwide pandemic.”

She said the project aligns with archivists around the world who are collecting and preserving material documenting the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are in the midst of the most profound crises in modern history – a crisis that touches all aspects of human existence,” she said. “Our goal is to collect the experiences and responses of our community to the pandemic. For this special project, collecting efforts here in the College’s archive are expanded beyond our normal scope to include not just our College community, but all residents of DuPage County.”

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