The history of Brooklyn contains many stories of resilience and reinvention and Hurricane Sandy adds another chapter to that account. Brooklyn has come out in force to help this recovery and Brooklyn Historical Society is committed to doing its part by making sure there is a thorough and publicly available collection of material that will document the preparations, response, and recovery efforts.

Soon after Sandy made landfall, Brooklyn History began using email and social media to collect photographs. Our November Photo of the Week series featured “before and after” photo essays about areas impacted by the storm. We have a Storify page where you can see some of these photos, and you can still contribute: tweet photos to @brooklynhistory or using the hashtags #brooklynphotos and #sandy, or email us at library@brooklynhistory.org, with “Sandy” in the subject line.

Throughout the fall, BHS has turned its efforts to more systematic documentation of the storm. Journalists sometimes refer to their work as the first rough draft of history. I think of the archive’s work coming just behind the news cycle to collect the information that writers and researchers will need to write the second, third, and thirty-fourth drafts of our history. To that end, we have started up collecting efforts in several areas. Some of these projects are already in progress, although the most intense work will happen in the first months of 2013, and some will go on for a few years:
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