About Us
The Pandemic in Boone Project stems from the Digital Watauga Project, a digital community archive dedicated to the preservation of Watauga County's history. The Digital Watauga Project is, working in partnership with the Watauga County Public Library and as a project of the Watauga County Historical Society, a non-profit, 501 (c) 3 organization.
The creators and behind-the-scenes workers of Pandemic in Watauga are also current technicians for Digital Watauga. Their passion for the preservation and accessibility of Watauga County's past has pushed them to initiate this current project with the hopes of allowing the community to actively participate in archiving their own pandemic experiences for future use and reflection.
Personal experiences during a time like this will be extremely beneficial to future researchers, historians, and residents studying this crucial time in Watauga County's history. Technology is providing us the unique opportunity to proactively collect and store materials from the pandemic that might otherwise be lost to time. Items from this project will provide the details and context of larger happenings across Watauga County at this time, many of which reflect the cultural landscape of the U.S.
As previously stated, we are a non-profit project that is focused purely on archival preservation.
Read more about the founding ladies below!
Tara Bradshaw
is a previous technician for the Digital Watauga Project. She recently earned her MLIS from University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Tara's archival interests include accessibility, outreach, and digital preservation.
Sai Estep
is the Digital Watauga Coordinator, where she coordinates the activities of the project’s employees and volunteers, as well as takes an active role in the collection management, organization, digitization, and web upload of materials.
Jennifer Woods
is a senior technician at the Digital Watauga Project. She has worked there just over a year. With an MLS from ECU, her focus is providing access to community history through the archival processes of small organizations and inclusiveness of marginalized populations.
