Students and researchers at IUPUI are collecting people's personal stories right now for an oral history project about the experiences of COVID-19.

It's meant to document how the virus is affecting our lives, share our collective experiences and by archiving that history, potentially help prepare for future pandemics.

When classes at IUPUI moved online because of the coronavirus, students in Professor Jason Kelly's public history course took a vote and decided to document the pandemic in real time.

"Doing our work as public historians and doing oral histories as a way to better understand the COVID-19 outbreak and the effects on people's lives," explained Jason Kelly, director of the IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute.

The COVID-19 Oral History Project is collecting personal stories of the pandemic from people in Indiana and around the world.

These are stories of how the virus has affected their health, their job, their family, their community.

The interviews will become part of a larger archive online, in partnership with universities across the country, with pictures, memes and videos of what people are experiencing right now: empty streets, working from home, chalk-drawn messages of encouragement.