On March 7, 2021, Annie Tummino, Head of Special Collections & Archives at Queens College Library, was interviewed by LuLu Garcia-Navarro on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday to discuss the Queens College COVID-19 Collection, which is a part of the Queens Memory COVID-19 Project. Tummino is a part of a collaborative effort in community archiving that includes Queens College Library, Queens Memory, and Queens Public Library.
The interview focused on the amazing work that archivists do to preserve our experiences and memories of this time. It goes into the work of Tummino’s team in collecting the stories of COVID-19, documenting the digital artifacts (videos, oral histories, images, documents, etc.), and preserving them for the future so that there is a record of today’s experience during the global pandemic. As Tummino puts it, “the role of archivists is not only to preserve old records but also to figure out what’s happening in the world today that researchers and community members will want to be able to study and understand in the future.”
Take some time and listen to the interview (3 minutes), explore the Queens College COVID-19 Collection, and maybe contribute your own story to the historical record. Also, check out Tummino in the recent JSTOR Daily article, “Preserving the History of Coronavirus in Queens.”