Abstract
Since January 30, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared the SARS CoV-2 disease (COVID-19) to be a public health emergency of international concern, the National Library of Medicine's (NLM's) Web Collecting and Archiving Working Group has been collecting a broad range of web-based content about the emerging pandemic for preservation in an Internet archive. Like NLM's other Global Health Events web collections, this content will have enduring value as a multifaceted historical record for future study and understanding of this event. This article describes the scope of the COVID-19 project; some of the content captured from websites, blogs, and social media; collecting criteria and methods; and related COVID-19 collecting efforts by other groups. The growing collection—2,500 items as of June 30, 2020—chronicles the many facets of the pandemic: epidemiology; vaccine and drug research; disease control measures and resistance to them; effects of the pandemic on health care institutions and workers, education, commerce, and many aspects of social life; effects for especially vulnerable groups; role of health disparities in infection and mortality; and recognition of racism as a public health emergency.
Highlights
On January 30, 2020, as the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) a public health emergency of international concern [1], the National Library of Medicine (NLM) began collecting web and social media documenting the emerging health crisis as part of its ongoing Global Health Events web archive collection (Figure 1) [2]
Web collecting is supported by the Collection Development Guidelines of the National Library of Medicine, which regard websites, blogs, social media, and other web content as increasingly important sources for documenting the scholarly biomedical record and illustrating diverse cultural perspectives in health and medicine [3]
Collecting and archiving content related to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic follows earlier collecting efforts on the 2014 Ebola outbreak [4], the 2016 Zika virus outbreak [5], HIV/AIDS [6], and the ongoing opioid epidemic [7]
Summary
The National Library of Medicine Global Health Events web archive, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic collecting. Since January 30, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared the SARS CoV-2 disease (COVID-19) to be a public health emergency of international concern, the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM’s) Web Collecting and Archiving Working Group has been collecting a broad range of web-based content about the emerging pandemic for preservation in an Internet archive. Like NLM’s other Global Health Events web collections, this content will have enduring value as a multifaceted historical record for future study and understanding of this event. This article describes the scope of the COVID-19 project; some of the content captured from websites, blogs, and social media; collecting criteria and methods; and related COVID-19 collecting efforts by other groups. The growing collection—2,500 items as of June 30, 2020—chronicles the many facets of the pandemic: epidemiology; vaccine and drug research; disease control measures and resistance to them; effects of the pandemic on health care institutions and workers, education, commerce, and many aspects of social life; effects for especially vulnerable groups; role of health disparities in infection and mortality; and recognition of racism as a public health emergency
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