COVID-19 Collection Project

A pertinent digital project began taking shape this fall as Tameron Williams—Library Graduate Fellow from the USU Department of History—worked to collect oral histories of USU faculty, staff, and students’ experiences of the covid-19 pandemic.

Williams began working on this project in January under the direction of project manager and Archival Librarian Todd Welch. They developed planning documents, explored outreach methods, and prepared the wide range of collected materials. Williams led a number of oral history interviews, including an interview with USU President Noelle Cockett.

Over 100 oral histories were added to USU Special Collections University Archives and will be made accessible through the Libraries’ Institutional Repository. The Graduate Fellowship position was generously funded by USU Central Administration.

Williams said he hopes that twenty years from now, these collections will provide crucial first-hand experiences for researches on how people responded to difficult circumstances and especially how lasting the lessons from the pandemic were.