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Preserving the Outpouring of Grief
Karen Mackey, who catalogued items for the archive this summer, said its magnitude shows "how much of a global community we've become."
(By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)
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But with each object that arrived, came a series of questions. Should it be saved? Should it be discarded? Like the 32 cakes that were received, one in honor of each person killed by Seung Hui Cho, a mentally disturbed student who also killed himself. Was it right to eat them or better to throw them away? Should someone take a photograph first to document that they existed?
Same with the banners that seemed to come from every school across the country, some signed with the handprints of elementary school kids who hadn't yet learned to write and others with the insight of fellow college students who'd also experienced tribulation. Which deserved to be kept?
"You try to imagine what kind of research people will do in the future," said Cassy Ammen, who was part of the Library of Congress team that went to the university.
"You try to think who in a 100 years will want to know that," added another team member, Cheryl Adams.
That is the catch to this type of preservation process: Not everything can, or should, be preserved. The Library of Congress recommended that the university aim to save 5 percent of the physical objects that were received.
To Keep, Or Not
There is a room labeled "Not kept" in the rented office space where the objects have come to rest.
Mostly there are banners and a few stuffed animals piled in the room. A snow globe that says "Peace" also found a home in a cardboard box there. But the other rooms -- labeled "textiles," "banners," "cards," large posters" and "keep items" -- are packed with mementos.
It is easier for the team that has worked here this summer to decide to save something than to choose the opposite fate.
"Sometimes I'll put something in the discard room, and a student will pull it out and say, 'We have to keep this,' " said Tamara Kennelly, the university's archivist. It's her job to oversee the archiving process and to ultimately decide what will be kept.
Worthy of keeping, she decided, is the large kite that came from South Korea and the box of items from a school in China. A note in the box explains that the class "spent a day gathering gifts, special Chinese gifts hoping to bring you blessing, peace, and finally joy in the midst and in the aftermath of the madness." Keep-worthy is also the poster from Columbine High School and the card from a federal prison inmate. Many condolences were received from jails, but this one had been carefully penned and contains hand-drawn pictures of the victims.
"It just made me think a lot about grief and this whole ripple effect, that what happened here in the little town could have such a dramatic effect in the world that people would want to send something," Kennelly said, standing amid it all. "It's affected them, too. It's changed the way they see the world, too."
The university has only 800 cubic feet in which to store the archived goods, and Kennelly's team has until November to decide what will go there. She calls it a "daunting" task, especially since funding for the student staff runs out next month.
