Michael Sivcovich, NCL Patron Services Supervisor, Nederland. Summer vacation will forever and always be one of the fondest memories for me growing up. But, as I’m sure y’all are WELL aware, this summer is going to be a much more unique memory for all the children, adults, adult-children, and childish adults here in our community. One of the things that seems distinct to me, is that we are experiencing several major social movements and all of them seem to draw reactions, both good and bad, that effect much more than ourselves. It seems our society hasn’t seen a confluence of events of this magnitude in decades.  

Our community has always excelled at telling stories (some can be taller than mountains) and preserving our unique history. Through extraordinary times, we tend to find new and adaptive ways to both make sense of and navigate the world, making our time an even more special and unique bit of history. And though roles of libraries may be shifting a bit, one role that remains dominant is archiving human history through the lens of varying experts and perspectives. 

The Nederland Community Library, not to be outdone by the local tall tales, is also finding new and adaptive ways to preserve our town’s history in these extraordinary times. We are asking for the community’s help in the development of an archive of journals, to be kept, preserved, and circulated here at the library. There are kits available that allow you to assemble and decorate a high-quality journal for thoughts, observations, drawings, newspaper clippings, poems, or just about anything that you feel would help future generations further understand what the world is like right now. It’s a chance to be heard! A chance to be circulated! A chance to be immortalized!

I can get ahead of myself.

We are encouraging community members of all ages from in town and surrounding areas, no matter who you are, where you’ve been, what you think about current events, to join our archive and become one of the largest, authentic archives we have here in Nederland.

For more information, please call 303-258-1101 or email michaels.ncl@gmail.com

(Originally published in the July 2, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)