Library of Congress launches website where Missourians can share COVID-19 stories

By Columbia Missourian via My Courier-Tribune

WASHINGTON — The Library of Congress wants to know: When did you first realize the pandemic would change your life?

People from Missouri and across the country will have an opportunity to share their pandemic stories by answering that question and others as part of a new nationwide effort to collect and preserve oral histories about the impact of COVID-19.

“The goal is to document the lived experience of the residents in the United States across these last few years,” said Nicole Saylor, director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, the world’s largest library and the main nonpartisan research arm of the U.S. Congress.

The library, which has teamed up with the nonprofit oral history group StoryCorps, launched a new website on Jan. 22 where the public can record personal stories about their pandemic experiences.

The recordings will be archived in the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center collection. Stories that participants want to make public will be available on the StoryCorps website.

Missourians who want to participate in the project can record themselves talking with a friend or family member about their pandemic-related experiences for up to 40 minutes.

The kinds of questions that project organizers suggest for these discussions include:

What challenges did you experience because of the pandemic and how have you navigated them?

Was there anything that brought you joy during the pandemic?

What do you wish more people knew about your experience during the pandemic?

Is there a specific story you would share to illustrate this time in American life for your great-grandchildren or for those living 50, 100 or 200 years from now?

The project also is seeking healthcare workers to talk about the pandemic’s impact on their jobs as they cared for patients who became ill from the virus as it spread around the world. In Missouri, more than 23,000 people have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The opportunity for the public to make recordings is part of a larger “COVID-19 American History Project,” mandated by Congress, to collect oral histories from frontline healthcare workers, survivors of people who died and others impacted by the pandemic.

Two Missouri representatives in Congress were co-sponsors of the bill that created the project. U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Ballwin, represents the state’s 2nd Congressional District. The other, former Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Harrisonville, retired in January 2023.

Wagner was unavailable for comment, a spokesperson said, and Hartzler couldn’t be reached.

In addition to the public recording their own stories, historians and researchers collect additional stories as they travel the country. They’ve interviewed funeral directors nationwide, workers in New Orleans faced with impacts to their businesses and childcare workers in Appalachia, among others.

“This is part of what we think is important to capture: the range of voices about their experiences in these major moments in history,” Saylor said.

Full details about how to record a conversation about your pandemic experience are available on the StoryCorps website, tinyurl.com/covid-19-experiences. Participants will need to create an account on the site, which provides directions on how to introduce yourself for the recording as well as suggested interview questions. To listen to recordings submitted to the project, visit tinyurl.com/covid-archive.