Schomburg Center COVID-19 Web Archive collection
Focus
This collection centers and documents the African diasporan experiences of COVID-19 including racial disparities in health outcomes and access, the impact on Black-owned businesses, and cultural production. The collection also seeks to document the pandemic’s community impact in New York City through state and local news, and government responses to COVID-19.
History
The Schomburg Center’s Digital Archivist, Zakiya Collier, currently leads the #SchomburgSyllabus project — funded by the Mellon Foundation — a web-archiving effort that aims to capture the hashtag movements and syllabi that have confronted questions of race and justice and lays the groundwork for an institutional web archiving program that can document events as they unfold. In witnessing the ways that the COVID-19 pandemic was disproportionately affecting Black communities, it was imperative to create a web archive collection that ethically and eclectically chronicles the Black experience of COVID-19, from racial disparities in health outcomes to joyous Black cultural production.
Collection
This collection centers and documents the African diasporan experiences of COVID-19 including racial disparities in health outcomes and access, the impact on Black-owned businesses, and cultural production. The collection also seeks to document the pandemic’s community impact in New York City through state and local news, and government responses to COVID-19.
Form of Collection
The collection includes websites, videos, blogs, news articles, photographs, news articles, restaurant menus, obituaries, journal articles, resource lists, emailed newsletters, crowdfunding campaigns, and reading lists.
Emphasis
This collection documents the African diasporan experiences of COVID-19 broadly as well as the community impact on New York City with a focus on Harlem.
Time Period
March 2020-Present
Public Access
Yes, at https://archive-it.org/collections/13918
Project Director
Zakiya Collier
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
New York Public Library
Contact Person
Zakiya Collier
Email: zakiyacollier@nypl.org / schomburgwebarchives@nypl.org
Telephone number: 212-491-2245
Website: https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/schomburg/webarchives