Historical Society unveils diary project on virus

Lorain Historical Society is unveiling a new project for community members this weekend.

Kaitlyn Donaldson, curator at the Historical Society, came up with the idea to have community members document their lives during the novel coronavirus epidemic.

“This is a historic event we’re living through, and it’s affecting every corner of our community,” Donaldson said.

Donaldson, who follows several museums and archivists on social media, said she drew this project idea from various influences and her own research in Lorain.

During her research of the Spanish Flu in Lorain during 1918, she said she wished she would have been able to read a firsthand account.

“I would have loved to read a diary entry from someone in Lorain,” Donaldson said.

Emotions and thoughts play a lot into historical documentation, she said.

“When we have firsthand accounts, we’re able to understand exactly how people felt during this time, and we’re able to understand their headspace,” Donaldson said.

Getting journal entries from community members would provide future historians with a chance to dive deeper into its history, she said.

“There are so many things that can be done with a project like this,” Donaldson said. “We want to know how daily life has changed, how life has changed for children and what people are doing to stay occupied and how they feel.”

The project is open to all age groups and will give everyone a chance to participate and document their time during the pandemic, she said.

Although there have been many social media posts about people’s time during the pandemic, Donaldson said she and the Historical Society would rather have journal donations and signed permission slips for the entries.

“It just makes everything more clear and gives us the chance to catalog everything properly,” she said.

With the internet’s constant evolvement and the obsoletion of technology, Donaldson and other historians are worrying about cataloging digital information.

“It becomes one of those things where we have to think about the future,” she said. “We have to think about how easily things can disappear from technology and also what happens if what we’re using becomes obsolete.”

Entries could include dayto-day activities, schedules, poems, letters and basically anything documenting people’s lives during this time, Donaldson said.

The Historical Society has a few details left to plan, but will post information on the project on lorainhistory.org/.

Project details are expected to be finalized by this weekend.