{"id":121,"date":"2020-03-20T13:54:06","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T13:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/?p=121"},"modified":"2020-03-20T13:54:06","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T13:54:06","slug":"tornado-recovery-with-tech-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/2020\/03\/20\/tornado-recovery-with-tech-archives\/","title":{"rendered":"Tornado Recovery with Tech Archives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A critical moment in Putnam County history occurred on March\n3rd<\/sup> when an EF-4 tornado shocked the region. The tornado killed 19\npeople, destroyed 100 homes, and damaged countless others in the county. As Middle\nTennessee residents inspected their homes in the daylight, many found debris in\ntheir yards, some found debris as far away from the tornado as Jefferson City,\nCelina, and Crawford, Tennessee. People found insulation decorating their trees\nlike a bad Spanish moss and when they looked through their lawns, some found\nphotographs and memories from families miles away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Tennessee residents found photographs and personal papers,\nthey wanted to help reunite them with their original owners. Volunteers quickly\ncreated Facebook pages like the \u201cFound in the Storm: Putnam County Tornado,\u201d where\nFacebook users posted their finds and searched for owners. Users tagged\npotential owners of the materials and shared the posts to their Facebook pages\nand other groups. Meanwhile, community members were also taking the belongings\nthey found to Soul Craft Coffee, the Cookeville Community Center, and other\nlocations around the county for families to look through and claim as their\nown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Early photograph of display wall that gradually expanded to all the halls in the Cookeville Community Center<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

While many families were able to recover their belongings\nusing the posts in Facebook groups, it was evident that Facebook\u2019s algorithm,\nthe sheer volume of posts and duplication, and not all victims being on\nFacebook meant that the posts were not reaching everyone they needed to or were\ncausing additional confusion. On March 5th<\/sup>, the staff in the Tennessee\nTech Archives began working to build trust and connections with the community\nto advertise the Archives as a centralized, long-term place that could reunite\nfound photographs and with their owners. The Archives\u2019 goals were to clean and\nhouse the personal belongings according to archival best practices, and\ndigitize the photographs and other materials into an easy to browse and search online\nlocation to minimize the need for families to look in multiple physical and\nsocial media locations until they could be claimed. The Archives\u2019 intent was\nalso to minimize the strain on the affected families, many of whom were already\noverwhelmed from needing to focus on applying for FEMA aid, working with\ninsurance, and finding new homes rather than tracking down disparate personal\nbelongings. The ideal plan for Tech included working with the numerous drop off\nlocations, picking up the photographs, and bringing them back to Tennessee Tech\nfor cleaning, digitization, storage, and hosting on an online platform. The\nArchives launched the online platform and got working. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photograph wall at the Cookeville Community Center<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Lots of our early work was volunteering at the Cookeville\nCommunity Center. Numerous volunteers, from Tech and not, worked to assist in\ndisplaying photographs so their owners could easily browse while the\nphotographs resided at the Center. Volunteers also worked to make sure the\nphotographs were dry, bagged, and ready to be brought to Tennessee Tech in the\nfuture. The Archives began working on moving the photographs on March 12 and\nsimultaneously brought in volunteers to assist with photograph processing at\nTennessee Tech. What started as something small, maybe 100 photographs, turned\ninto something big. Initially only a few photographs were turned in. As of\nMarch 20, there were probably 2500 photographs that need to be reunited with\ntheir families. This work has taken a lot of the archives time, but is\nrewarding and much needed for the community to heal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Upper Cumberland Grotto volunteers cleaning photographs in the archive.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As of March 20, the Cookeville Community Center is still\nreuniting photographs and personal papers on site. Tennessee Tech is picking up\nthe photographs as they are turned in. The current database has over 2000\nphotographs with materials being reunited with their owners daily. Tech\nrealizes the photographs it holds could possibly be from families as far away\nas Mount Juliet. Part of the recovery effort will be making connections to the\nwest of Putnam County to notify victims of the photograph database. The website\nshowing the photographs is password protected and given to tornado victims or\ndesignated family members. This is because the photographs are personal and\nprivate. Those wishing for access can contact Tennessee Tech Archives at\narchives@tntech.edu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A critical moment in Putnam County history occurred on March 3rd when an EF-4 tornado shocked the region. The tornado killed 19 people, destroyed 100 homes, and damaged countless others in the county. As Middle Tennessee residents inspected their homes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,60,6,59,61,63],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cookevillestrong","tag-recovery","tag-techyeah","tag-tornado","tag-uppercumberlandgrotto","tag-volunteerstate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}