The corona period was a difficult and special time for many Amsterdam residents. Years that are etched in our memory and which we want to record for the future. The Stadsarchief Amsterdam has therefore declared 'Covid-19' a hotspot shortly after the outbreak of the corona virus in 2020.
This means that the City of Amsterdam and the Stadsarchief have committed to preserving as much municipal information as possible on the handling of the virus, public reactions to the virus, measures against its spread, and the aftermath of the virus.
Corona archive
Amsterdam-based organisations also preserve more documents on corona because it was such a (hopefully) exceptional time. One such institution is VU Amsterdam. They have randomly gathered the corona-related archives into one collection and donated them to the Stadsarchief Amsterdam in 2023. The VU Amsterdam Covid-19 archive can now be viewed by anyone.
The archive contains documents from the Executive Board, the university's various faculties and departments, and the Corona Crisis Team. You will find in the archive, for example, all meeting minutes of the Crisis Team, reports on measures taken, scripts that took into account all kinds of scenarios and designs for all kinds of stickers to guide students safely across campus.
Born digital
Apart from being about the corona period, the archive is special because it is entirely 'born digital'. Thus, the entire archive consists of documents that were created digitally; the archive does not contain any paper or digitised documents. Processing such an all-digital born archive is still quite a challenge. Files must be exported from the original archiving system and provided with the correct 'metadata' to be transferred to the City Archive of Amsterdam. Metadata are substantive data about the files, such as file name, folder name and dating, and any additional characteristics about the content of the document or the work process to which that document belongs.
The inventory of the VU Corona archive should therefore be read as a folder structure, where folder names have been converted into headings and (collective) descriptions.
The next step is to read the archive into the City Archive's e-depot, and to 'preserve' the files there: ensuring that they can be opened and read by researchers in perpetuity (or at least for a very long time). To this end, the City Archive Amsterdam continuously performs quality checks ('haven't any ones or zeros fallen over'), and converts obsolete or rare file formats into newer and sustainable file formats. In addition, the City Archive Amsterdam ensures that the right metadata is and remains linked to the right data.
Viewing digital files
Finally, all files must be viewable via the Amsterdam City Archives' website. Thanks to the replacement of both the e-depot and the website of the Amsterdam City Archives, this is now possible. The website is still under development. Currently, you cannot view files consisting of several pages with a viewer. You have to download the files first. Also, by no means all file formats can be viewed on the website yet. That is because the Amsterdam City Archive does not have a viewer for all formats. However, you can download these files and view them on your own computer. The download button can be found on the website under the 'image' of the file.
Who saves something...
... has something. With digital archives, however, it is important to preserve them as well as possible at the earliest possible stage. A letter from your grandmother from 80 years ago can probably still be read, but who still has her first e-mail or text message...? That is why it is so great that VU Amsterdam. created their corona archive at such an early stage and transferred it to the City Archive of Amsterdam. Corona is thus permanently accessible heritage (whether you're happy with that or not...).
Source: Municipality of Amsterdam