With the city on the verge of total shutdown and coronavirus worries rampant, Christopher D. Cantwell, a UW-Milwaukee history professor, has started gathering an archive of this remarkable moment in history.

“It’s established practice to do something like this when something so monumental happens,” Cantwell says. “Historical institutions commit to opening their doors and taking in documents and records that might help preserve the community’s memory for future generations.”

The site’s goal is to memorialize how Milwaukee experienced this global pandemic. Cantwell and one of his classes have taken on the task of curating submissions and material for the collection. They are enlisting the help of every Milwaukeean who wants to contribute something to the archive, be it photographs of shuttered businesses, notifications from employers, personal stories, examples of social distancing in the community, and anything else that records the strange times around us.