January 2020
Mini-Interview Series
This series records short interviews with local apartment residents about the events of September 1, 2019. The interviews were conducted between January 10, 2020 and January 15, 2020. The data exists due to the effort of our librarian Oliver Whitney and the approval of library administration. An earlier interview with Oliver appears as an oral history in the library’s Community Histories and will not be reproduced here. Names are omitted for privacy.
​
If any other library patrons are willing to contribute their testimony over the next month (May 22 to June 20), we will consider posting those additional interviews as well. Please mark the correspondence with “resident interview” in your medium of choice. Oliver will evaluate the veracity of the testimony and may make edits to protect your privacy.
​
[Note: I am sure I did these interviews. I am not sure when. The associated text file for the audio folder says January 2020. For some reason, I think I did some of them in fall 2019 as an intern, shortly after this disaster happened. Hours, days after. Not January after. But the library hadn’t started an inquiry yet. So I don’t know why I would go to the apartment. The simpler explanation is I mislabeled a file. The more difficult explanation is the boss somehow knew, even back then. Before I saw the collection.
And about those testimonies—I have some merchandise in storage that I think I can send you in return. So include whatever details are necessary, if that interests you. Totally optional. I won’t send anything out before the deadline.]