Paper short abstract:

The focus of the paper is the creation of an open-access archive of pandemic diaries in the digital archive of Latvian folklore. It was a new archiving experience, as the submitted data were processed continuously, the archive records were updated daily.

Paper long abstract:

On March 13, 2020, an emergency was declared in Latvia due to the spread of the Covid-19 virus, people had to adapt to new living conditions. Reflections about the lockdown, distancing, new working conditions appeared more and more on social networks, therefore on March 18 Autobiographical collection of Archives of Latvian Folklore and the literary and philosophical magazine Punctum launched the Pandemic Diaries initiative, inviting people to submit daily documentation.

Between March and June, more than 200 authors took part in the initiative. After the lifting of the emergency, the activity of writing diaries also slowed down, but in November 2020, the state of emergency was restored in the country and the sending of pandemic diaries was resumed.

The focus of the paper is the creation of an open-access archive of pandemic diaries in the digital archive of Latvian folklore. It was a new archiving experience, as the submitted data were processed continuously, the archive records were updated daily. The processing and integration of social network (Facebook, Twitter) records into the digital archive was also a challenge. In parallel with the archiving of records, metadata was also managed: information about photographs, authors, place of writing. All records were also mapped to create a map of the geographical area of the pandemic diary.