Diaries in the Time of Pandemic 2020–2021

"Diaries in the Time of Pandemic" was a crowdsourcing initiative led by the Archives of Latvian Folklore of the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art and the online culture magazine PUNCTUM. The goal of this initiative was to document the experiences of people in Latvia during the pandemic through diary entries.

The Pandemic Diaries project was launched in March 2020 in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. It was conducted in partnership with public media outlets, which promoted the project and invited the public to participate.

The Pandemic Diaries project received an overwhelmingly positive response,  with diaries submitted by a diverse group of 240 authors. The diaries ranged in length, with some covering just a few days while others offered ongoing reflections on life during the pandemic over the course of several months. These diaries provide insight into the various experiences, emotions, and challenges faced by people during the pandemic, including feelings of restriction, anxiety, and uncertainty. The diary writing slowed down in the summer of 2020 as daily life returned to a more normal state, but some authors continued to write, and others joined in as the pandemic entered a second wave.

As part of the Pandemic Diaries campaign, people were encouraged to write about their experiences during the pandemic and submit their diary entries for publication. To protect the privacy of the authors, the initiative required that entries be published anonymously or with personal details removed, and these terms were enforced by the editors. The diary entries were instantly included in the Autobiography Collection of the digital archive at garamantas.lv and published online on the same day they were received.

A total of 2333 days' diary entries were submitted, along with around 800 photographs and drawings. These submissions, which covered a wide range of experiences and emotions, are now a valuable resource for documenting the first wave of the pandemic in Latvia. They will provide future generations with a unique glimpse into people's thoughts, feelings, and daily lives during this unprecedented time. 

Additionally, the collection of Pandemic Diaries includes geolocations for all the places mentioned in the diaries, which illustrates the geographical spread of the thoughts and allows to trace the daily routes and travels reflected upon in the diaries, providing further insight into the impact of the pandemic on people's lives (see the tab 'Places'). 

The Pandemic Diaries project has created a rich and informative resource that will be useful for researchers and anyone interested in understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on society, particularly during the initial outbreak. 

The corpus of pandemic diary texts can be accessed on the Latvian National Corpus platform and the CLARIN repository.