About a year ago, the world was turned upside down as businesses closed, people were forced to work from home and classes shifted to online. COVID-19 was so unexpected, and no one knew how long this pandemic would last or how many people it would affect. 

Now our world has been living in a pandemic for a little over a year, and everyone’s lives have been affected. No one expected their daily life activities to come to a stop or school to still be online a year later. So many stories have come out of this unexpected period of life. 

The EWU Libraries are currently collecting stories from the EWU community about Life During COVID-19. EWU wants to have a digital archive of how the pandemic has impacted student and faculty’s lives. The goal is to help the future generation understand what it was like to live during this ambiguous time. 

EWU is asking for experiences through journal entries, memories, stories and photos to post on the digital archive. These experiences could be anything about how life changed from the start of COVID-19 to now. The list includes:

• Quarantining 
• How to keep in touch with loved ones 
• How someone served others during this time 
• Changes in social settings 

If interested in contributing to the EWU Archive, students can submit their entries here. https://www.ewu.edu/library/pandemic-stories/ Submission through a Google document is preferred. 

The EWU Libraries and Learning Commons will be posting prompts on Facebook every Tuesday throughout spring quarter. Acting university archivist Steven Bingo encouraged students to submit in order to capture a variety of perspectives during the pandemic. 

The project will continue to run through fall 2021 to include stories of students hopefully returning to campus. 

If students or members of the EWU community have any questions, contact Steven Bingo at [email protected].