Remembering is a form of honouring: preserving the COVID-19 archival record

Jones, Esyllt; Sweeney, Shelley; Milligan, Ian; Bak, Greg; McCutcheon, Jo Anne

doi:10.1139/facets-2020-0115

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The project began as a response to the concern that COVID-19 risked being another forgotten pandemic because of the ephemeral nature of web-based primary sources. We have expanded the project to incorporate new digital methods to increase the capacity to collect digital materials and lay the foundation for writing a social history of the COVID-19 pandemic in Saskatchewan [ 26 ]. We began in March 2020 by setting up an Archive-It repository to automatically record a web archive of government, organizations, and media reports related to the COVID-19 pandemic in Saskatchewan.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capturing and Documenting the Wider Health Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic Through the Remember Rebuild Saskatchewan Initiative: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Interdisciplinary Project

Muhajarine¹,

Dixon²,

Dyck³

et al. 2023

JMIR Res Protoc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background In the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, the global COVID-19 pandemic appeared amidst existing social health challenges in food insecurity, housing precarity and homelessness, poor mental health, and substance misuse. These chronic features intersected with the pandemic, producing a moment in time when the urgency of COVID-19 brought attention to underlying shortcomings in public health services. Objective The objectives of the program of research are (1) to identify and measure relationships between the pandemic and wider health and social impacts, namely, food insecurity, housing precarity and homelessness, and mental health and substance use in Saskatchewan, and (2) to create an oral history of the pandemic in Saskatchewan in an accessible digital public archive. Methods We are using a mixed methods approach to identify the impacts of the pandemic on specific equity-seeking groups and areas of social health concern by developing cross-sectional population-based surveys and producing results based on statistical analysis. We augmented the quantitative analysis by conducting qualitative interviews and oral histories to generate more granular details of people’s experiences of the pandemic. We are focusing on frontline workers, other service providers, and individuals within equity-seeking groups. We are capturing digital evidence and social media posts; we are collecting and organizing key threads using a free open-source research tool, Zotero, to trace the digital evidence of the pandemic in Saskatchewan. This study is approved by the Research Ethics Board at the University of Saskatchewan (Beh-1945). Results Funding for this program of research was received in March and April 2022. Survey data were collected between July and November 2022. The collection of oral histories began in June 2022 and concluded in March 2023. In total, 30 oral histories have been collected at the time of this writing. Qualitative interviews began in April 2022 and will continue until March 2024. Survey analysis began in January 2023, and results are expected to be published in mid-2023. All data and stories collected in this work are archived for preservation and freely accessible on the Remember Rebuild Saskatchewan project’s website. We will share results in academic journals and conferences, town halls and community gatherings, social and digital media reports, and through collaborative exhibitions with public library systems. Conclusions The pandemic’s ephemeral nature poses a risk of us “forgetting” this moment and the attendant social inequities. These challenges inspired a novel fusion among health researchers, historians, librarians, and service providers in the creation of the Remember Rebuild Saskatchewan project, which focuses on preserving the legacy of the pandemic and capturing data to support an equitable recovery in Saskatchewan. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) DERR1-10.2196/46643

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capturing and Documenting the Wider Health Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic Through the Remember Rebuild Saskatchewan Initiative: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Interdisciplinary Project

Muhajarine¹,

Dixon²,

Dyck³

et al. 2023

JMIR Res Protoc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…[…] how memory institutions are funded and supported; the gaps in our capacity to preserve the digital records that reflect how we communicate with one another today; and how to preserve and make accessible valuable scholarly research into the societal impact of COVID-19 (Jones et al , 2021).…”

Section: Archival Authorities and The Pandemic Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is evident that COVID-19 altered the conduct of information management work and service provision, with many institutions implementing a range of limitations around physical access to collections with digital access, collection and communication becoming part of the “new normal” and more broadly suggesting a cultural shift within the everyday work environments of information professionals. The Royal Society of Canada reports that “[m]any digital trends, from the exponential growth in Zoom subscriptions to changing information-seeking behaviour, can be ascribed to the ongoing pandemic” (Kastrenakes, 2020; Watercutter, 2020 as cited in Jones et al , 2021). Despite identification of these trends at a global level, there has been little impetus placed on understanding how information professionals were impacted in their everyday work lives, how their ways of working changed but also more broadly what ramifications that may have had for recordkeeping practice.…”

Section: Archival Authorities and The Pandemic Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

Pandemic recordkeeping – the New Zealand experience

Wendelken

2023

RMJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the recordkeeping response to the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand. It identifies how archival authorities supported potential changes in recordkeeping practice as a result of constraints brought about by the pandemic, in particular the shift to work-from-home as the dominant paradigm. Design/methodology/approach Analysis of guidance, standards and initiatives published online by New Zealand archival authorities in the early stages of the pandemic was undertaken and contextualised with international counterparts. Findings Findings indicate that guidance provided to support changes in recordkeeping practice brought about by the pandemic was high-level, outlining potential considerations and possible pitfalls but did not provide applied advice on how to approach the shift to a work-from-home reality. Originality/value Research into the effects of the pandemic on recordkeeping practice and output is in its infancy; this paper contributes a brief insight into the New Zealand experience.

show abstract

“…Since then, numerous reports with policy recommendations in different societal areas have been published. One of these working groups published the policy briefing "Remembering is a Form of Honouring: Preserving the COVID-19 Archival Record" in which the authors paint a bleak picture of Canadian archival institutions in this respect (Jones et al, 2021). The report qualifies the collection and preservation of records as patchwork.…”

Section: Documenting Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

Threats to Future Knowledge: The Impact of the Pandemic on Organisational Recordkeeping

Haraldsdóttir¹,

Foscarini²,

Jeurgens³

et al. 2022

ECKM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper reports the outcomes from the first phase of an international research project investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on organisational recordkeeping. Recordkeeping is a critical component of organisational knowledge management, as the making and keeping of records as evidence of organisational activities and transactions enables core memory and accountability functions over time. Working from home during the pandemic has disrupted routines of records creation, storage, and management, and will likely result in substantial black holes in future knowledge. The objective of the first phase of our study was to find out what records-related initiatives were underway in academic settings and in archival institutions in the initial stages of this global crisis. We conducted an environmental scan, which showed that much attention was being paid to documenting the pandemic (e.g., collecting and preserving social media discussion, promoting the use of diaries by citizens); however, the provision of advice and standards for organisational recordkeeping at a time when regular access to organisational systems could not be guaranteed was largely missing. In the second phase, we designed a survey aimed at capturing the experiences of recordkeeping professionals who worked from home for varying lengths of time in Europe, North America, and Australasia. It is expected that this comparative study will help us envision a “new normal” for the time when the current health emergency is over. This paper concludes with a discussion of how our environmental scan and literature review have informed the multilingual survey that is currently underway.

show abstract

Remembering is a form of honouring: preserving the COVID-19 archival record

Cited by 9 publications

References 16 publications

Capturing and Documenting the Wider Health Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic Through the Remember Rebuild Saskatchewan Initiative: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Interdisciplinary Project

Capturing and Documenting the Wider Health Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic Through the Remember Rebuild Saskatchewan Initiative: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Interdisciplinary Project

Pandemic recordkeeping – the New Zealand experience

Threats to Future Knowledge: The Impact of the Pandemic on Organisational Recordkeeping

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About