Why We Should All Be Keeping Journals

Currently, epidemiologists, doctors, researchers, and other experts are busy studying the new virus and the ongoing pandemic.

Historians would be compiling stuff and in the next few decades, will start studying about this event, putting it in a historical context. Future historians have not lived through this ongoing crisis, and they will be the ones who would be actively studying it and making it available in the form of history to the world.

Most of history is derived from government documents, transcripts, newspaper articles, and recently, from digital data. Oral history, a tradition from the old, pre-written cultures are often crucial in providing a holistic, rich, and complete picture of a historical event.

Oral histories (and even personal journals) sometimes answer questions that aren’t found in the official texts, about the inner motivations and discarded facts that may be important.