For some, documenting quarantine and COVID-19 experiences has served as a way to remember this significant time period. The employees at Lister Hill Library are taking this idea to a whole new level.
Through the project, Documenting COVID-19 at UAB, members of the Blazer community can submit their pandemic experiences to Lister Hill through the form of art, written word, voice recordings and more. These documents will then be added to UAB’s collection.
Anna Kaetz, library assistant in Lister Hill’s department of Special Collections in the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library, said this idea was born from the shock of having to work remotely.
“Right when everything started,” Kaetz said. “We were at the library one day and we never thought we’d be working from home.”
Kaetz said this surprising change urged the librarians to create a way to share and record this new time that we’re in.
“It would be really nice if we could preserve what’s going on right now and get some feedback about how everyone is feeling during this time,” Kaetz said.
Kaetz said the goal of this project is to capture the authentic experiences of what life is like in a college community in the midst of COVID-19.
“We’d love to hear how everyone’s doing,” Kaetz said. “It’s an interesting time going back to school right now, so we would love to hear from the students and hear how they’re doing.”
Regan Snow, intern at Lister Hill Library and senior in English, said her submission for the project was a written piece.
“I went through and reflected on how I thought the pandemic affected me the most,” Snow said. “I wrote about how I thought (the pandemic) would never affect us.”
Snow said that in her submission, she recalled how fast changes continued to occur after students had to evacuate campus during the Spring Semester.
“Within a matter of a couple months, they were saying we’re all going home and learning from there for the rest of the semester, which was really interesting seeing everything unravel,” Snow said.
Snow said being able to share her memories from the perspective of both a student and intern was a very interesting experience for her.
To submit your own COVID-19 experience, you can email akaetz95@uab.edu for more information.
