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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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"I don't think people understand how big it is," Kennelly said of the collection.
Paper chains alone filled a cardboard box made to carry a couch.
"You can't understand the magnitude of what has been sent unless you see it yourself," said Karen Mackey, 24, who just graduated from the school with a master's degree in history and spent her summer working on the archive. "It's actually showing how much of a global community we've become."
Virtual Mourning
After the shooting, the Internet also became a place of communal mourning. User photos on MySpace pages were immediately replaced with the image of a black ribbon wrapped around a "VT." Facebook postings became virtual shelves of sympathy cards. A memorial in the virtual world, Second Life, even sprouted, complete with digitally drawn flowers, memorial stones and crying mourners.
Brent Jesiek, manager of the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture, said there was an immediate recognition that a digital archive would be needed in addition to the physical one.
"We were already getting the sense that some of this might be lost over the long term if someone didn't do something to collect some of it," he said.
So, he and others created a Web site: http:/
On it are songs, photographs, poems, blog postings and scenes from the Second Life memorial, including a comic strip that chronicles Cho's struggles. In one, Cho is shown in a darkened dorm room, holding onto the window. A frame later he is pictured clutching his head, sweating and saying, "They are all laughing at me!! I know! I know! I know!"
One comic strip in the series was blocked from public viewing after some people found it too detailed. It showed Cho walking into a classroom, opening fire.
"One of the challenges we've had with the archive, especially in the immediate aftermath, is a lot of people wanted to view it as a memorial, as a tribute site," Jesiek said. "And in a way it is. But it is not just that. We've tried to be very agnostic in the type of material we collect."
Still, there is only so much distance one can maintain while poring through the archived items hour after hour, day after day. Every letter must be read by someone. Every item must be logged and photographed.
"I think everyone's had moments where they've gone into the bathroom and cried," Kennelly said.
Off to the side of the orderly piles of banners and tagged mementos that her group has worked all summer to organize sits a chaotic cluster of candles and figurines. It is a small memorial that team members created for themselves, made from a hodgepodge of items with no traceable origin. None are particularly keep-worthy . . . just comforting.
