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ALPENA — When the coronavirus pandemic has passed and things have settled back to normal, how will future generations remember what we lived through?

We will share our stories, and document them, with the help of the Alpena County Library.

The library is encouraging anyone and everyone to participate in sharing their stories of COVID-19 with the library’s Special Collections Department. That way, history can be captured and catalogued on a more personal level from which future generations can learn.

“Living in a current state of unprecedented crisis, historians and everyday people of the future will want to know how we spent our days,” Assistant Library Director Jessica Luther said in a press release.

She said they will wonder what it was like to live through the global pandemic in Northeast Michigan on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

The best way to tell your story is however you can, be it email, photo, handwritten, audio, video, or however you express yourself, even by painting a picture representing your journey through the pandemic.

“In hopes of sharing peoples’ stories with current and future generations, the Special Collections Department of Alpena County Library invites you to keep a diary of living during the COVID-19 epidemic in Northeast Michigan,” Luther explained. “Diarists may type or write by hand, transcribe news, draw, compose poems, gather stories and so forth. No stress needs to be placed on proper grammar, spelling or style. The emphasis is on self-expression and a willingness to be a social commentator.”

Special Collections Librarian Don La Barre said many other libraries across the country are heading up this type of charge to chronicle a wide variety of true tales of living the quarantine life, the health care worker life, the essential worker life, the COVID-19 survivor life, and more.

“There’s been a real push, from the beginning of onset, especially when the stay-at-home orders started coming out for different states, a lot of the archives in the East Coast, the West Coast, Indiana University, and now the Library of Michigan, as well, are all starting to do projects or programs that are similar to this,” La Barre said. “So we reached out to them to see how they’re doing it.”

He said this is a huge moment in history that needs to be documented.

“It is such an unprecedented time,” he said. “And it’s really important in our world to do our best to help people document what’s going on, what life is like now that we’re under quarantine and such. And not just the newspaper articles, but the personal stories. The diaries, the photos, the Instagram stories, there’s just a lot of material going out there that, if someone’s not trying to preserve that material and that shared experience … it can get lost.”

He said you don’t have to be a poet or writer to participate. You just have to contribute in your own personal way.

“It’s for anybody who wants to share,” La Barre said of the diary submissions.

The goal is to “find as many stories as we can and combine them so people can access them and learn what that was like, you know, looking 20, 30, 50, 100 years back to today,” La Barre said.

“Events are changing by the day,” Luther said. “They are specific to you, and to your families and friends and communities. Please start writing now.”

Stories, photos, videos and audio files can be submitted online now, and at the library when it opens back up after the stay-at-home order is lifted. At that time, people will be able to bring their submissions into the library. La Barre said that, “once things have settled down,” library staff may conduct oral interviews to be included in the project, as well.

“How did that feel going into work when there was a stay-at-home order? Or how was it working from home? Or how was it being in a care home? Or being away from your family during those times?” La Barre asked. “This is just the beginning of it, so our hope is to create a nice, comprehensive, holistic approach to gathering this material.”

To submit your information and to view writing prompts from the Library of Michigan, visit https://forms.gle/DqMCvXEnTScg1ari9.

Information can also be found on the library’s website, alpenalibrary.org or the library’s Facebook page.

A link on the library’s homepage will take you to a Google survey to fill out about the medium you will be using and what you have to contribute. You do not need to be a library patron to participate.

Questions about this project can be directed to La Barre at specialcollections@alpenalibrary.org.