COVID-19 Telecommunications Collecting at the Science Museum, London

Through its rapid spread, global reach and capacity to overwhelm healthcare systems, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a public health crisis that impacts all our lives. The pandemic has brought with it enormous social change, the repercussions of which will be felt for years. It has seen the introduction of strict public health controls and placed enormous demands on key workers, but it has also galvanised the international scientific, technological and medical communities in the fight against it. The Science Museum Group cares for one of the world’s most significant collections of science, technology, engineering and medicine. In this article, we describe our curatorial response and collections responsibilities around telecommunications and the COVID-19 pandemic and how we are actively, and sensitively, researching stories and identifying objects—physical and digital—related to telecommunications to collect on the nation’s behalf.