COVID-19 Documentation Project

Font Size: + -

Feedback Print

Healthcare worker administering COVID-19 vaccine to woman

Missoula County and the University of Montana’s Mansfield Library are working together to create an archive of the Missoula community’s experience with the COVID-19 pandemic. The archive will include oral history interviews, documents and other materials from businesses, local government, nonprofits and individuals around Missoula. The purpose of the Missoula County COVID-19 Documentation Project is to create a rich collection of sources that can help us understand what is likely to be one of the most important historical events of the 21st century. In particular, the project seeks to document how people understood the pandemic, how they responded to it, and how the decisions they and others made shaped the experience of the pandemic in Missoula. The collection will be cataloged and made available to scholars and the public through a digital portal administered by the Archives & Special Collections Department of the Mansfield Library.

Individuals and organizations can submit their materials online on the Archives & Special Collections website. Organizations with larger donations can contact Leif Fredrickson to coordinate submission.

What sort of content should people submit?

Examples of content that would be appropriate for the project include, but are not limited to:

Photographs, such as of you working from home, empty shelves in stores, closed playgrounds and parks, people wearing home-made masks, messages of hope in windows, chalk drawings on sidewalks, people receiving the vaccine
Social media posts, such as from businesses announcing altered business models, groups formed in response to the pandemic, personal posts sharing life in quarantine or receiving the vaccine
Video clips, such as of quiet streets or crowded trailheads, neighborhoods howling, social distancing
Diaries, blog posts or journal entries reflecting your experiences
Newsletters or email from a business sharing updates with employees or customers
Business records, such meeting minutes, budgets, notes from incident command teams, and continuity plans
Oral histories
Creative works, such as a song, poem, zine or short story

Organizations working with the project include:

Historical Museum at Fort Missoula

Downtown Missoula Partnership

City of Missoula

University of Montana

Upper Swan Valley Historical Society

Seeley Lake Historical Society

YMCA

Harvest Home Care

Missoula Food Bank

Historical Research Associates

Missoula Interfaith Collaborative