About

MISSION STATEMENT

The Keene Observation Archive (KOA) is an archival project to document the everyday experiences of the members of the Keene State College community. Inspired by the Mass Observation Project, KOA is a collaboration between the graduate students in the M.A. program in History and Archives and the Wallace E. Mason Library.

KOA arose from the need to document the COVID-19 crisis as reflected in the experiences of members of the KSC community. This pandemic is unprecedented in the lives and memories of students, faculty, and staff.

The graduate students found — as historians and future archivists — it to be a moral obligation to document the impact of the crisis as it unfolds in order to better preserve the historical record and provide future generations with a glimpse of these tumultuous days.

SCOPE OF COLLECTION

The basis of the collection are questionnaires or diaries kept by Observers, volunteers who record their thoughts and experiences based on prompts provided by the curators of KOA. Archival documents and ephemera that support the subject of the prompts are collected from the Observers or by the KOA curators. The KOA archive is stored in the special collections of Mason Library.