On 3-4 November, I attended a two-day event at the British Library that highlighted the challenges and approaches of collecting materials created during times of war, conflict and crises. Through a series of panels and discussions, museum and library professionals, researchers and private collectors shared examples of incredible historical and contemporary initiatives to preserve diverse materials and heritage sites at risk of loss, decay or destruction.
Having recently worked on the joint Bodleian Libraries and History of Science Museum Collecting COVID project, I was particularly interested in contemporary programmes of collecting. Our project, which ran from 2021-2023, aimed to acquire and preserve the University of Oxford’s research response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It enabled us to capture, catalogue and publish over ninety oral history interviews.
Modern collections/initiatives showcased included:
- Web Archiving the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicola Bingham, British Library
- Coastal Connections (heritage sites at threat from coastal erosion) Dr Alex Kent, World Monuments Fund)
- Crowdsourcing photographs for the Picturing Lockdown Collection Dr Tamsin Silvey, Historic England
- Endangered Archives Programme (recent case studies include Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan) Dr Sam van Schaik, British Library
- Collecting Human Stories during the war in Ukraine, Natalia Yemchenko, Rinat Akhmetov Foundation/Museum of Civilian Voices
Rapid collecting is a means to collect documentary evidence, preserve cultural memories and commemorate events. By providing access to these collections, institutions are then able to build a body of evidence and facilitate research. I was struck by the similarities between modern initiatives and those that had taken place a century before. Some of the contemporary examples of collections crowdsourcing harked back to the collecting of ephemera during the First World War. Dr Ann-Marie Foster highlighted the Bond of Sacrifice Collection and Women’s Work Collection (Imperial War Museums) in her presentation with Alison Bailey, in which families sent items memorialising loved ones, as examples of early collecting initiatives. Modern rapid collecting work has meant that contemporary archivists/curators have taken up this tradition, working actively to save materials at risk of loss through intentional selection.
As well as crowdsourcing and outreach, other strategies institutions draw upon in an increasingly online world are web archiving, digitisation and digital preservation. With social media now a main mode of communication for millions, web archiving is a useful tool to preserve and present online response to global events. Work to capture websites relating to recent events is ongoing at both the Bodleian Libraries and British Library. I found Archive-It to be an incredibly useful tool to capture and publish a range of web pages (including the social media pages of COVID-19 researchers, given with permission) for our project, which without reactive selection and preservation, would otherwise have been at risk of loss.
Overall, the event highlighted that institutions must use active strategies towards preserving at-risk materials created during ongoing crises and conflicts, including:
- Involving communities to assist in selection of materials;
- Providing as representative a view of the event as possible (capturing diverse perspectives);
- Providing access to collections and making them available as widely as possible (ethical considerations and sensitivities permitting);
- Democratising collections and preserving them for future generations.
