{"id":20411,"date":"2021-01-28T11:00:44","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/?p=20411"},"modified":"2025-02-06T14:03:22","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T19:03:22","slug":"covid-19-web-collecting-reflections-at-one-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2021\/01\/28\/covid-19-web-collecting-reflections-at-one-year\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 Web Collecting: Reflections at One Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Christie Moffatt ~<\/em><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention captured January 30, 2020. Archived pages available at: https:\/\/wayback.archive-it.org\/4887\/*\/https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/coronavirus\/2019-nCoV\/<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One year ago, on January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the current coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic a Public Health Emergency of International Concern<\/a>.\u00a0 The disease was yet to be officially named and there were 5 positive cases in the United States<\/a>.\u00a0 With this designation, following National Library of Medicine Collection Development Guidelines<\/a>, the NLM Web Collecting and Archiving Working Group began collecting web and social media to document the emerging global pandemic.\u00a0 While we had no idea for how long the pandemic would last, nor the extent of its impact, we began this effort with a belief that web content would be a significant part of the primary historical record for future research and understanding of this historic time.\u00a0 As the nature of web content is ephemeral, future access to the web and social media documenting the pandemic\u2014its impact, our reactions, and response, and how it evolved over time\u2014depends on actively identifying and collecting material in real time, before it changes or disappears entirely.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>
World Health Organization Tweet<\/a> announcing the official name of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, February 11, 2020<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the course of the past year, Working Group members met weekly (virtually) to discuss the evolving story of the pandemic and web sources to include in the collection.\u00a0 We began collecting the COVID-19 sites of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, the National Institutes of Health<\/a> (of which NLM is a part), and the World Health Organization<\/a>, and expanded our scope to related content from a wide range of public health, medical, and scientific government and non-government organizations sharing information on the web about the virus and the disease for health professionals, individuals, and their communities.\u00a0 We also selected news articles documenting the story of the virus spreading to and across the United States and the significant challenges we continue to face. \u00a0Our scope is broadly focused: on the many social dimensions, efforts to control and prevent the spread, health disparities, the impact on vulnerable populations, tracking the disease, vaccine development, health worker and patient experiences, misinformation, and more. We also aim to select content documenting the many stories of innovation, creativity, and hope in the face of this crisis.<\/p>\n

\"Acreenshot<\/a>
“How to sign QUARANTINE, SELF-ISOLATE, and STAY HOME in American Sign Language for Beginners” by ASLMeredith, April 26, 2020. Archived in July 2020<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With input and recommendations from across NLM, as well as from colleagues in the web archiving, museum, and library communities, including the Office of NIH History<\/a>, as well as from the general public, we\u2019ve archived nearly 6,000 resources (over 1 Terabyte of data) so far, including websites, blogs, news articles, and video recordings.\u00a0 Recommendations reflect personal and professional interests from diverse perspectives because the impacts of COVID-19 are intensely personal as well as collective.\u00a0 As we all have our own view of what is important to preserve, broadening opportunities for input has enriched the collection in many ways. Among the thousands of items in the collection, content includes videos on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in sign language to deaf communities, blog posts documenting the experiences of medical trainees, and remembrances of lives lost.<\/p>\n

\"Homepage<\/a>
Pandemic Perspectives: The COVID-19 Journal for Medical Trainees. Archived November 04, 2020<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Identifying and reviewing content for inclusion in the collection is an important step, but much work follows to prepare the collection for future researchers.\u00a0 Working Group members have been actively crawling content using the Internet Archive\u2019s Archive-It service and Conifer, reviewing for quality, notifying content owners when needed according to NLM policies, and adding descriptions to support discovery. \u00a0This work is ongoing as we continue to identify content related to the vaccine distribution, new and evolving policies regarding prevention and control, and the long-term impacts of the disease and the incredible toll it is taking on our society.\u00a0 As we approach January 30, 2021, we see over 25 million confirmed cases in the United States, and many more around the world, and mourn the loss of over 400,000 lives. We hope that this web collecting effort around COVID-19, along with the work of the International Internet Preservation Consortium <\/a>and many others<\/a>, serves to document this historic pandemic and support research on a broad range of important issues and questions that will no doubt be raised for many years to come.<\/p>\n

\"Page<\/a>
Covid Memorial Quilt. Archived January 2021<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We invite you to read more about NLM\u2019s COVID-19 web archive collection<\/a>, part of a larger Global Health Events web archive collection<\/a>, in the recently published Journal of the Medical Library Association<\/em> article “The National Library of Medicine Global Health Events web archive, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic collecting<\/a>,” and the broader context of documenting the pandemic published in Nature<\/em> on December 17 \u201cWhat are COVID archivists keeping for tomorrow\u2019s historians<\/a>?\u201d \u00a0We have also written a number of posts about NLM web archiving on the Ebola Outbreak, Zika Virus, and the Opioid Epidemic, available here on Circulating Now<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 NLM continues to welcome suggestions for content to include in the collection at nlmwebcollecting@nlm.nih.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To learn more about NLM\u2019s broader role in the response to COVID-19<\/a> please visit https:\/\/www.nlm.nih.gov\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Get the latest public health information from CDC: https:\/\/www.coronavirus.gov<\/a><\/em>
\nGet the latest research information from NIH: https:\/\/covid19.nih.gov<\/a><\/em>
\nLearn more about COVID-19 and you from HHS: https:\/\/combatcovid.hhs.gov<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>Christie Moffatt is Manager of the Digital Manuscripts Program in the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine and Chair of NLM\u2019s Web Collecting and Archiving Working Group.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Library of Medicine is archiving web and social media content documenting the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19605840,"featured_media":20459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"COVID-19 Web Collecting: Reflections at One Year #COVID19 #webarchives","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14520,42333869,12763,103],"tags":[91161,678875829,136219,174727,668328720,28006,2971278,531406,238214791],"class_list":["post-20411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-us","category-archives-manuscripts","category-collections","category-news","tag-collection-development","tag-covid-19","tag-epidemic","tag-global-health","tag-nlm-associate-fellows","tag-public-health","tag-recent-acquisitions","tag-web-archiving","tag-web-collecting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/ASL_Social-Distancing_feature.jpg?fit=900%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3xcDk-5jd","jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19605840"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20411"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61381,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20411\/revisions\/61381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}