Covid-19 Pandemic Archive

Collection reference: GB 0559 PAN

Background information:

The Pandemic Archive was created in 2020 by Archives and Special Collections staff in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the UK National lockdown.

Contemporary Collecting is a practise which many galleries, museums and archive took up during the pandemic, especially during the national lockdowns. It is a way of calling out for specific material to fill in a gap or evidence a particular event/period/theme rather than waiting to see what is naturally donated to the archive which might cover the same information. In this way you can capture ephemera which is often lost, bring focus and diversity to collections and prevent gaps in the record – for example, one of the main reasons we began our Covid Collecting is because of the lack of information we have on the 1918 Flu Pandemic in our medical archives. We know this has been a big research gap in our existing collections which we were keen to avoid for Covid-19.

We, therefore, ran some contemporary collecting strands across 2020 and 2021 to provide a personal account of this period in history. Often it is personal accounts contained in the archive which researchers find striking, perhaps because it is such a rare glimpse behind the curtain of the official facts and figures and timelines. We called out specifically for diaries and creative writing, images and videos so that members of our University community and the community of Forth Valley, where the University lives, could come together to tell history.

This project was further developed in 2021 by the launching of the University of Stirling Pandemic Oral History Project where staff from Archives and Special Collections, the University Collections and the Division of History, Heritage and Politics came together to create an oral history of the experiences of our staff and students during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Three members of project staff interviewed staff members and trained up a team of student volunteers in oral history methodologies so that they could conduct the interviews with their peers. Outputs from this oral history project can be accessed at the bottom of this page.

For more information, you can visit the original project page.

Contents:

The Pandemic Archive consists of three main sections:

• The material gathered from our contemporary collecting project

• The interviews with staff and students at the University created by the University of Stirling Pandemic Oral History Project
• Material relating specifically to the University of Stirling during the Covid-19 pandemic

Catalogue information:

Further collection details are available on our online archives catalogue.

Custodial history:

Material was either created specifically for this archive or donated by individual donors.

Access conditions:

With the exception of some of the oral history interviews, this collection is accessible. Please contact archives@stir.ac.uk to book an appointment or to discuss your research.

Recent publications and outputs:

‘An Unusual Period of Unspecified Length’ – A Creative Oral History of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Article:

Bowman S. et al, ‘An Unusual Period of Unspecified Length’ – A Creative Oral History of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Paper Trails, UCL Press, https://ucldigitalpress.co.uk/BOOC/Article/3/148/

Film:

The article is paired with the below short film (24mins), an audio-visual interpretation of the text.

Music:

The soundtrack to the film was composed by Connor Bristow, a student at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. You can listen to his soundtrack below:

Survey:

If you read the article and/or watch our film, we’d be very grateful if you answered a few short questions to help us evaluate the project.