Public history is a powerful tool for education: it connects the past to the present, it weaves the historian into the narrative, and it recenters the human struggle to focus on connecting us to the lessons of history. It offers a way of engaging critically with the past while never losing sight of our roles in creating the future.

We are all living in uncertain times. Living in the midst of a global pandemic, our everyday lives have been transformed and everything from school to grocery shopping to recreation have been disrupted. We are struggling today to make sense of what is happening, and someday future historians will be wondering the same. Please join us in documenting and preserving this historic moment of crisis and uncertainty for the future.

This archive focuses on the pandemic’s impact on Carleton and its communities, and the responses and experiences of those communities. It will store submissions to the Carleton Center for Community and Civic Engagement project on collecting stories as well. Public history students at Carleton are collecting materials that reflect organizational and community responses to the pandemic, and we invite you to contribute these materials as well. In addition, we encourage you to create more personal records of your experiences. Please visit our Collections Policies page for more details.