Petaluma Library issues call for pandemic documentation

The thing about the present is that eventually, it always becomes the past.

Future historians pretty much count on it.

That’s why the Sonoma County Library system is inviting community members to be an active participant in documenting this historic moment by saving their writings, art works, photographs, and other creative chronicles and expressions about life during a pandemic, and then donating them to the library’s permanent collection.

“Once the crisis is resolved and it is safe to bring items to the library,” states a release distributed in late March, “residents will be invited to bring in journals, photos, drawing, letters, scrapbooks and other two-dimensional physical documents that tell the story of life in Sonoma during this time.”

The library staff is already coordinating efforts to curate and catalog those donated items into a special “primary source” collection that will be available to future generations or researchers, students, writers and teachers.

The term “primary source,” sometimes known as “original source,” is used by historians to describe an artifact or document - including diaries and journals, letters and manuscripts, and other information that is created at the specific time under study. Such material is valuable for a number of scholarly, historical, journalistic and literary purposes.

“Researchers and students will be able to use (such) work to understand what it was like living in Sonoma County during this challenging time,” says Connie Williams, History Room Librarian at the Petaluma Regional Library. “Your story can be part of our community’s story.”

Given the unprecedented nature of the current situation, such first-person accounts, illustrations and descriptions will likely prove important and essential in years to come.

Not sure how to begin chronicling your own experiences?

Williams suggests that people start by simply writing down or creating and collecting images that in some way describe their first reactions to hearing about the virus and its rapidly expanding impacts on schools, businesses and daily life. Then continue recording everyday experiences in whatever way seems appropriate, answering the questions that future researchers will be asking about this period.

“What is life like in your neighborhood?” Williams poses. “How do you communicate with others? What has changed?”

“This is a great way,” says Sonoma County Library Director Ann Hammond, “to help our community preserve memories of this important event.”