COVID-19 Collecting Project
Help Us Document History as It Happens
This pandemic is an unprecedented experience for most living Americans. History Center staff is diligently working to collect Central Florida history as it is happening. We hope to preserve the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of everyday Central Floridians during this unique time for future use as a resource to help communities, medical institutions, researchers, and policymakers respond to future pandemics. To learn more about the project, click here.
Who Can Participate
Anyone living, working, or visiting our seven-county region (Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Polk, Seminole, and Volusia counties).
What We Are Collecting
We are currently asking for digital donations of the items listed below. If you’d like to donate something that’s not on this list, or if you have physical items you’d like to donate, please contact Aaron Pahl at AaronPahl@ocfl.net.
Photographs
- Images documenting how COVID-19 has affected you or your community. This might include pandemic-related signs, deserted spaces, local businesses, people observing (or not observing) social-distancing guidelines, once-ordinary activities and events that are different now, health care, grocery-store shelves, how you and your family are surviving quarantine, e-learning and other activities that have gone virtual, etc.
- Please do not put yourself at risk in order to take a photograph. Always adhere to CDC guidelines for protecting yourself and others from possible infection.
- Use these formats: JPG, PNG, or TIF.
Audio or video recordings
- Record yourself, or yourself and others, talking about how COVID-19 has affected your life.
- Please keep recordings under 25 minutes.
- Not sure what to talk about? For a list of possible questions, click here.
- Use these formats: MP3, .MP4, .WAV, .MOV.
Journal entries
- Write about how COVID-19 has affected your life.
- No length requirement
- Not sure what to write about? For a list of prompt suggestions, click here.
- Use these formats: .DOCX, .ODT, .TXT., .PDF.
Community response
- We are working to digitally archive Central Florida-related articles, social media posts, memes, websites, and other online content surrounding COVID-19. If you see something online that you think we might’ve missed, please email the URL to Aaron Pahl at Aaron.Pahl@ocfl.net.
- Out of respect for others’ privacy and copyrights, please send only freely and publicly available content that has been published online in the form of a URL, or content that you have created yourself.
Donation Form
What Happens Next
After you submit your materials, you will be sent an email confirmation that we have received them. If your submission is selected for inclusion in the museum’s permanent collection, we will follow up with the appropriate donation paperwork. If you want to know more about how and why we choose to add items to our collection, please click here.
If you have any questions, please contact Aaron Pahl at Aaron.Pahl@ocfl.net.
Photographs below by Alex Menendez
The interior at Orlando International Airport remains functional but mostly empty to air passengers due to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak on Friday, April 17, 2020 in Orlando, Florida.
Fernando Sosa, a volunteer member of a group called Covid Mask Makers Orlando, creates 3D face mask parts from a customized template he designed in response to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) threat, on Tuesday, March 24, 2020 in Orlando, Florida. The masks, once prepared by other volunteers, will be washed, sanitized and donated to medical professionals across the country who are running out of critical protective equipment supplies.
Walt Disney World remains closed to the public due to the Coronavirus threat on March 23, 2020 in Orlando, Florida.
Appointment only testing for Coronavirus (Covid-19) has begun in the University of Central Florida parking garage lot A on Monday, April 6, 2020 in Orlando, Florida.