Share Your Stories: Impact of COVID-19: Home

The Salem Academy and College Archives is initiating a project to solicit documents as we attempt to record accurately the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Salem community – students, faculty, and staff.

How to Participate

Types of Stories

We are interested in your stories about the shift to remote instruction and learning, studying and working from home, working off-campus jobs, the impact of closing residence halls and changing campus services and events, the ways you and your friends and family are staying in touch during this period of social distancing and self-quarantine, and, for “essential employees,” how your job has been affected as a result of an almost empty campus.

Submission Formats

The method you select to record your thoughts, feelings, and experiences during this time is up to you. Submissions may include the following:

• written journal entries
• digital storytelling
• blog entry
• social media posts
• audio/visual recordings
• other creative works

Need some help with how to capture your experience? We have created this short questionnaire to help you start your story.  Personal Reflections of COVID-19 (PDF). Fill in any or all of the questions, save it and upload it along with any other items you would like to submit.

Please comply with county and state stay-at-home orders while self-documenting.

The Submission Process

• The Archives can accept just about any format you create, but if you’re uncertain about something in particular and need technical assistance, please reach out to donna.rothrock@salem.edu or library@salem.edu. Let us help!
• Please use this Google Form to submit your items. You will be able to sign an agreement allowing the Archives to preserve your submission, and you will receive important information about the copyright and use of your content.
• If you interview other people in the course of your documentation, we will also need their permission so that we can preserve and share the recordings with future researchers. (Permissions can be revoked at any time upon request.) Please have any friends, family members, or community members fill out the Google form if you wish to record with them. If we do not receive releases from all participants, we cannot preserve the materials. Only one person will need to attach the files to the form—co-creators can simply fill in their personal information along with a description of the materials.
• Submissions will not be available to the public immediately. After they are accepted and processed by Archives staff, they will be available in our digital repository.

Available Support

This crisis has affected our Salem community—faculty, staff, students, families– emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally, and financially. Salem’s full time, benefit-eligible employees have access to an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) through ComPsych Guidance Resources that is administered by One America that includes free counseling services (limited). Part-time employees may register at the above site to access toolkits and online resources, but counseling services are not available. Students may contact Salem’s Counseling Services for counseling information and resources on how to manage stress and anxiety related to COVID-19.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Katie Howell, Archivist, and Tyler Cline, Digital Archivist, J. Murrey Atkins Library, UNC Charlotte, for permission to reuse selected text, ideas, and forms from UNCC’s “Contribute Your Stories of the COVID-19 Outbreak” website.