In days following the attack July 7 on Dallas and Dallas Area Rapid Transit police officers, our city’s residents mourned; many delivered cards, handwritten letters, flowers, balloons, stuffed animals and other mementos to Dallas Police Department headquarters as well as neighborhood substations. See our neighborhood’s substation memorials here.

Photo by Danny Fulgencio

Photo by Danny Fulgencio

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During a rain shower last week, police “quickly gathered and transported items indoors,” according to a DPD spokesperson.

The massive memorials have created a large and important job for the Dallas Public Library archivists, who will document and preserve all handwritten messages and non-perishable items for preservation and storage in the library’s History and Archives Collection.

“It will be an ongoing process of collection this week then processing for a very long time,” Director of Libraries Mary Jo Giudice says. She hopes to also collect the same items from DART memorials, though that is not a sure thing at this point.

Other items from the events of July 7 and the ensuing hours and days, such as “video, digital photography, graphics, and press releases, probably other things” will be collected and archived at The City of Dallas’ Municipal Archives, according to city archivist John Slate, ensuring Dallas and the world will never forget what happened or the lives lost.