Members of the UCSF community are invited to participate in documenting their COVID-19 pandemic experience by contributing their accounts of living, working, and coping to be preserved in the UCSF Archives and Special Collections.
During this unprecedented public health crisis, there is a historic need to collect, preserve, and provide open access to materials representing UCSF’s diverse constituencies who are responding to and experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic.
Help document the COVID 19 pandemic and UCSF response by sharing your experience to be preserved in the UCSF Archives.
Collecting these materials will help UCSF create a comprehensive historical narrative that both incorporates stories of those affected, including clinicians, researchers, staff, trainees, patients, and our community partners, and allows for future examination of how this multi-faceted public health crisis played out along political, social, economic, cultural, and biomedical fronts.
Our goal is to develop and implement a UCSF-wide coordinated approach to obtain and document efforts related to research, patient care, community outreach, education, as well as everyday personal experiences that shape our collective record.
We need your help to build and grow the UCSF COVID-19 Pandemic Chronicles to cover both the major milestones and daily moments in our shared response and experiences. This collection will be a critical, one-of-a-kind public record that tells the story about how UCSF, working with other Bay Area institutions, and individuals endeavored to contain and combat COVID-19, as well as how communities, families, faculty, staff and students endured this life-changing, global pandemic.
These contributions will be reviewed and accepted according to UCSF Archives’ collection policy and subsequently cataloged, described, and made available in the near future via the archives reading room and a dedicated digital collection that will be built on Calisphere, a UC digital repository.
This project complements UCSF’s ongoing archives activities to capture the University’s websites, social media, and selected publications about its response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The archivists will continue working with all schools and departments across UCSF to collect administrative records that offer evidence of activities, decisions, and policy-making at the University.
If you have materials to contribute to UCSF’s records, please submit them using this form. Specifically, we are looking for:
- Pictures and videos you took at work, at home, in the neighborhood and on campus
- Blog, vlogs, twitter and Instagram channels, and other social media accounts
- Posters, flyers, handouts, signs, T-shirts, and other ephemera (please keep originals until archives office reopens)
- Journals, correspondence (both digital and paper-based), calendars
- Interviews with family, friends, co-workers, etc.
- Digital storytelling projects
- Creative projects
- Presentations and screenshots illustrating classroom experience
We look forward to getting your unique contributions that will help UCSF record this unprecedented time in history.
FAQ
How long will the COVID-19 Chronicles submission portal be open?
It will not be closed. Like the UCSF AIDS History Project that has been run by the archives since 1987, chronicling the COVID-19 outbreak will be an ongoing archival project.
The submission form is not working, who can help me?
Please contact an archivist at covid19archives@ucsf.edu.
I have materials in a language other than English, will you accept this submission?
Yes, the archives accepts materials in multiple languages. This reflects a diverse perspective of the impact the pandemic has on different communities. Besides providing a detailed description of your submission, please list the language/s used.
How to submit analog materials (letters, t-shirts, flyers, posters, signs, etc.?)
Please keep originals until Archives and Special Collections reopens and print your submission form. When office hours are resumed, you may drop off or mail your materials and completed form to us.
Will all submitted materials be accepted?
We welcome the opportunity to review all submitted materials. All collecting decisions will be based on the UCSF Archives’ collection policy. UCSF Archives reserves the right to reject any submission or any component of a submission. Rejected submissions will not be added to the UCSF Archives holdings.
What will happen if I submit materials containing PHI and other personal information?
All accepted contributions containing PHI and PII will be preserved in the UCSF Archives and access to them will be governed by a donor agreement as well as HIPAA, FERPA and/other pertinent regulations.
Is there a minimum age for submission?
Yes, anyone 18 or older can contribute to this project.