Albany residents’ chance to make history

Albany residents can share their stories and be part of history in a new project to document the city’s journey through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Led by the Albany Public Library and Albany History Collection, the project aims to capture a snapshot of the city through the eyes of its residents as they adapt to the rapid changes of COVID-19.

City of Albany local history co-ordinator Sue Lefroy said the team was on the lookout for all insights, no matter how trivial they might seem.

“The Community Observation Project is designed to capture the individual experiences that make up our community to give us some understanding in the future of the time that we have been living,” she said.

“People are becoming the eyes and ears of the community.

“What I’d like to see in the project is regular contributors and following those people and their experiences as we enter the post coronavirus period.”

Ms Lefroy said participants would be asked a series of questions through an online survey to capture a snapshot of how issues such as social distancing and travel bans had impacted on their everyday lives.

“It helps us build an understanding of the time. It’s a community stream of consciousness,” she said.

“Everyone is experiencing something they’ve never experienced before and we live in a time of digital technologies that has enabled us to live through this upheaval in quite a different way.

“I strongly encourage people to think about their experiences and record them so we do retain that data for posterity.”

Visit the City of Albany or Albany Public Library website.