Virginia Tech Librarians Document Response to 2007 Shooting Tragedy

Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 2/11/2008

Librarians at Virginia Tech (Blacksburg) are working to archive artifacts documenting the outpouring of grief and support in the aftermath of the tragic April, 16, 2007, shootings that left 32 people on campus dead. Working with consultants from the Library of Congress (LC), librarians and university staff have collected over 87,000 items expressing condolence, including 33,000 paper cranes received in one lot, said Tamara Kennelly, a university archivist and librarian who is leading the project.

"This does not count the 4000 goody bags a lady from Texas shipped up here," Kennelly told LJ, "and thousands more cranes, bracelets, cards, ornaments, teddy bears, wristbands, and other items made available to students and the community at Squires Student Center through the University Unions and Student Activities."

Amid grief and raw emotion, librarians began working to establish the archive within days of the shootings. A team of consultants from LC came to campus, Kennelly noted, and librarians and staff began to coordinate the preservation of artifacts, both analog and digital, of the various efforts made to cope with the shocking events. "We wanted to ensure that all of us were working together," Kennelly explained, citing the university's Center for Digital Discourse and Cultures' April 16 Archive and the "DLVT416: A Digital Library Test Bed for Research Related to 4/16/2007 at Virginia Tech" as just "two of the efforts concerned with the long-term preservation of the materials."

The archive, officials say, will provide "primary source materials on the grieving and consolation process after a major tragedy." Items selected for the permanent collection will be organized, preserved, and housed in a climate-controlled environment, Kennelly noted. They will also be described in a finding aid that will be made available through the University Libraries' Special Collections web site and the Virginia Heritage Project. "It is heart wrenching every day I go to work," she said. "But it's also heartening to receive such an outpouring of support, prayers, and good wishes from people of all ages around the world."