5 minute read
Preserving the Past
Sara Davis, university archivist, and Rachel Gattermeyer, digital archivist, collaborated on the COVID-19 Collection Project for the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center.
PHOTOS BY AIMAN ZEHRA
AHC collects stories and artifacts of the COVID-19 pandemic for future generations to study.
PRESERVING
THE PAST
Everyone has a story to tell, especially when it comes to life during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic will be a historical event that future scholars, students and people worldwide will learn about and reflect on—but how will the COVID-19 pandemic be remembered, and who is documenting it so it will be remembered.
“I think as archivists, we’re kind of in charge of collecting history in an odd sort of way,” said Rachel Gattermeyer, the digital archivist for the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center. “When we get this gut feeling that something big is happening, we want to start collecting right away. It’s very easy for things to fall through the cracks and to get forgotten in history.”
Odds are, if you’ve ever visited UW, you’ll recognize the American Heritage Center (AHC) as the uniquely shaped building that resembles the peak of a mountaintop. Chockfull of historical documents and archives, the goal of the AHC is to collect, preserve and teach history, whether it’s in the university’s backyard or overseas, thousands of miles away.
The COVID-19 pandemic, being a massive event that affected billions of people’s lives, was something the AHC felt it needed to document. Gattermeyer and Sara Davis, the university archivist at the AHC, took on the role of documenting history in the making.
“We knew the COVID-19 pandemic was big and it was going to be impactful. We didn’t understand the gravity of it back in March of last year, but we just had a gut feeling we needed to be doing something to capture this history,” Gattermeyer said.
History provides important lessons, and when history is acknowledged, past mistakes can be avoided in the future. Davis and Gattermeyer found themselves drawing parallels from the flu of 1918 to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We kept thinking about the flu of 1918, and here in Laramie, we don’t have as much information or news coverage documented from that time as maybe New York City does. So, we wanted to be proactive in order to capture as much information about what we were experiencing and doing during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Davis said.
Gattermeyer and Davis channeled their “gut feelings” and got to work brainstorming ways they could document this historical period.
“Sara and I, in the back of our heads, had the question of, ‘100 years from now, what will future researchers, future people, want to know about what happened in Laramie?’ ‘What do people want to see?,’” Gattermeyer said. “They want to see themselves, their grandparents, they want to know what life was like, they want to imagine what happened. A great way to do that and connect to the past is through photos, videos and artwork.”
The two then started the COVID-19 Collection Project—an archive dedicated to documenting, preserving and sharing Wyoming’s experiences, thoughts, observations and stories throughout the pandemic. The project encouraged a wide variety of submissions that allowed for people to tell their stories.
Davis (left) and Gattermeyer examine part of an archive collection at the American Heritage Center.
“Not everybody communicates or thinks in the same way, so we were open to different formats that people could express themselves. We got some beautiful poems, some great photographs. There was even a theater group from Cody that did ‘The Covid Monologues,’” Davis said.
Almost a year and a half after the project’s start date, the archivists plan on continuing the COVID-19 Collection Project. “We are always accepting materials on this project. While this project has been going on, people have gone through changes. Their perspective and how to deal with this pandemic have dramatically changed over time, and we want to document those changes, as well,” Davis said.
While the project was successful and Gattermeyer and Davis enjoyed the process, it didn’t come without its challenges. Archivists are people too, living through the same history they are trying to record.
“Living through COVID-19 was pretty stressful. It was a little bit of a struggle working with those narratives, too. COVID-19 already impacted my own life, and then part of what I’m working on is dealing with what’s stressful at the time for other people, too,” Gattermeyer said.
Despite the emotional challenges, Gattermeyer and Davis found light within their work and through submissions and donations they received.
“It was really lovely, though, to see the lighter moments that people would send in. One of my favorite submissions we received is a photograph of the T-Rex on campus—and it has a mask on. That was really great and brought some levity to the project,” Gattermeyer said.
There’s no doubt the COVID-19 Collection Project will serve as an educational reference for years to come and will provide future Wyomingites with an accurate, yet personal, account of the pandemic. However, one of the best parts of the project is that it greatly illuminates one of the most beautiful qualities of Laramie—the Cowboy community.
“I think it’s great the way that we have come together as a community to support each other,” Davis said. “We’ve adapted in ways that allow us to come together across this big, vast state even when we have to be apart.”
“I hope that students, faculty, staff and alumni come away from this project feeling part of the Cowboy community. I think it’s been a rough year, and people should be proud of what they’ve lived through and what they’ve experienced, whether that’s coming through the other side or still moving through it,” Gattermeyer said.
Gattermeyer and Davis invite you to take part in recording Wyoming’s COVID-19 history, whether that’s sharing your photographs, written work, creative works or taking the survey on uwyo.edu/ahc/ covid-19-collecting.html. They invite individuals to get in touch at rgatterm@uwyo.edu or sarad@uwyo. edu with any questions about getting involved with The COVID-19 Collection Project.
Gattermeyer (left) and Davis worked to collect different types of items such as photographs and recordings for the COVID-19 Collection Project.
