Las Vegas museums still collecting shooting artifacts from Oct. 1
Frantic social media posts sent minutes after the shooting began. For days and weeks afterward, flowers, signs, crosses and other mementos were left at various sites, creating an impromptu memorial on the Strip.
All are pieces of the emotional jigsaw puzzle created by last year’s Route 91 Harvest festival shootings.
Under a valleywide archiving initiative called “Remembering 1 October,” museums and archivists have spent the past year collecting and preserving artifacts and stories related to the shooting and its aftermath.
UNLV University Libraries Special Collections and Archives has collected web pages and online news stories about the shooting, said Michelle Light, special collections director.
The goal is “trying to capture a balance of perspectives, particularly media coverage about the event,” Light said. Some archived pages can be found at archive-it.org/collections/9521.
In addition, “we’ve captured about 11 million tweets from the first four days after the event,” Light said. “We used a tool that allowed us to capture any tweet that (had) the word ‘Vegas’ from about an hour after the shooting occurred to about four days afterward.”
A few tweets and Instagram postings are up, but “we’re still working on providing access to that,” Light said.
UNLV Libraries is accepting digital photos or videos relating to the shooting, while UNLV Libraries’ Oral History Research Center continues to take oral histories from first responders, people who were injured, family members of victims and others who were directly involved.
Center director Claytee White said about 50 interviews have been completed, “but we plan to keep this project open for a two-year period.” Interview transcripts will be available online, and White said the center continues to seek people who wish to tell their stories (email oral.history@unlv.edu or call 702-895-2222).
Special Collections also will sponsor a public program on Oct. 5 called “Remembering 1 October: A Night of Healing and Community,” which will feature guests discussing their experiences.
The Nevada State Museum Las Vegas has collected nearly 2,000 artifacts related to the shooting, said Caroline Kunioka, curator of history and collections.
Among those are items the museum receives every week or two from the Las Vegas Community Healing Garden downtown.
Kunioka said the collection consists of ticket stubs and programs from the concert, cards sent to Mandalay Bay employees by other casinos’ employees, and even an IKEA sofa bearing written good wishes from customers. The museum also has collected magazines, newspapers and other items to be featured in an exhibit that was set to be up by Oct. 1, said Dennis McBride, museum director.
The crosses that became an impromptu memorial near the Las Vegas welcome sign — and items left by mourners on and around them — are part of the Clark County Museum’s Oct. 1 collection.
The museum has catalogued more than 14,000 items related to the shooting since February, and 1,000 to 2,000 remain, museum registrar Cynthia Sanford said. She expects the effort, which is being performed by about 20 volunteers, to be completed by late November. Some of the objects can be viewed at clarkcountynv.gov/museum.
A selection of items also will appear in “How We Mourned: Selected Artifacts from the October 1 Memorials,” an exhibit scheduled to run at the museum through Feb. 24 . Some of the crosses also are part of “The Las Vegas Portraits Project,” an exhibit of portraits of those killed, done by different artists, which will run through Oct. 19 at the Rotunda Gallery of the Clark County Government Center.
The Las Vegas News Bureau photographed many post-shooting events, including marquee tributes at hotels along the Strip, while the Mob Museum plans to collect materials relating to the role of law enforcement agencies. That effort has been delayed by the department’s focus on its investigation, said Geoff Schumacher, the museum’s senior director of content. The museum also plans to contact the FBI to document its role.
Contact John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jjprzybys on Twitter.
