Deerfield Academy
Oral History Project

Over the course of remote services in the spring of 2020, both the library and archives fielded a number of questions and requests from community members interested in learning about our school’s history, specifically how DA operated a century ago during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. Unfortunately, due to a lack of institutional publications at the time, we do not have a lot of information.

Looking to the future, others might ask the same question about our experience today. There will be a lot of recorded information about the world at large, but not necessarily about DA in particular. Due to that potential need, we have an opportunity, and perhaps a responsibility, to launch an oral history and ephemera project to collect and preserve the experience of DA students, employees, and community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our goal for this project is to create an inclusive and representative collection of oral histories and ephemera from the Deerfield community that represent engaged citizenship in the age of COVID-19.