Hi, we are the staff of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. Since we were established in 2000 via a unanimous act of Congress, we have been collecting oral histories and memoirs from US veterans, as well as original photographs, letters, artwork, military papers, and other documents. We have over 99,000 collections and that number is growing every day, making us the largest archive of this kind in the country.
We work with organizations and individuals around the country to grow our collections, but anybody can participate. All it takes is a veteran willing to tell their story, an interviewer to ask them about their service, and a recording device to capture the interview. Eligible collections will include either a 30 minute or longer interview, 10 or more original photos, letters, or documents, or a written memoir of 20 pages or more.
To ensure these collections are accessible for generations to come, we stabilize, preserve and securely store them for posterity, here at the Library of Congress. Our materials are available to researchers and the general public, either by viewing the original materials in person at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.. Additionally nearly 16,000 collections are available online at our website, http://www.loc.gov/vets.
The staff who will be answering questions are:
Col. Robert Patrick US Army (Ret.), Director of VHP
Monica Mohindra, Head of Program Coordination and Communication
Megan Harris, Research Specialist and Librarian
Andrew Huber, Liaison Specialist
From 9am-12pm Eastern today, please ask us anything about how we collect, preserve, and make available our collections, as well as anything about the individuals who comprise our archive and their stories, and of course questions about how to participate or any other aspect of the Veterans History Project. We will also try to answer questions about the Library of Congress in general, but keep in mind that it is a very large institution and we might not have specific knowledge about every detail.
Also, please sign up for our RSS feed here, and read our blog here! If you don’t make it to the AMA in time to have your question answered, you can always email us at vohp@loc.gov.
EDIT: It's now 12:00 here and the official AMA has come to an end. However, I am still going to be monitoring this thread and will send any new questions to the appropriate staff member for an answer, but I can't promise quick answers anymore. Feel free to keep asking questions though, and remember you can email us anytime at vohp@loc.gov.
This sounds like a pretty amazing project! I'm sure that each of you have come across tons of amazing stories and recollections while working on it, but are there any particular ones that really resonated with you that you could share with us here?
Thank you very much for being here!
I'm curious to know more about your collection of First World War accounts. With the death of the last living veterans of the war, this repository has become more important than ever; what is the scope of its contents, how are they being preserved, and what do you have planned (if anything!) for 2017?
Thanks again.
I've been following your project for a long time and I think it's absolutely fantastic. Thank you for running something so amazing!
With that said, my question is that of minorities: How well-represented are minorities in your collections? Is there a particular minority that you have yet to see but that you would like to include in the collections?
I know that the Korean War is often also referred to as "the forgotten war". What steps has this project taken to address this problem, or how has this problem affected the project as a whole?
Hi! Do you have suggestions on questions to ask and how to approach an aging veteran to ask them about doing an interview? My grandfather is 93, served in WWII for the US and I know he was present during D Day(he says he watched the beach landings from a ship) and the Battle of the Bulge. He began in a mail room in England and volunteered to join an engineer group that moved through France and somewhere into Germany. Any suggestions are welcome for questions I could ask. He also has photos of Jewish camps in an album that he will not discuss, photos of ovens and stacks of bodies.
Do you know of similar programs run for veterans in other countries such as the UK or Canada? If do, is any sort of cooperation between your projects?
Talking about time in the war can be difficult for a lot of veterans - do you have any advice for conducting oral history around difficult memories?
Thanks for doing both this project and this AMA! I noticed that only a few of the individual subject files are online; what are your plans for digitization and making them more easily accessible for folks doing research from home? Having worked with folks here for a few years, I'm constantly amazed at how many people are interested in history, but they don't typically have the resources to go to Washington, D.C. for their research.
What is the thing that has surprised you the most when looking at your collection?
How do you organize such a collection?
Thank you for making those happen. My uncle's recordings have been on there for years and is a great way for us to get to know about his life and to share his amazing tales.
Are the stories vetted in any way? Corroborated by other witnesses or documentation? Are there any stories that had to be edited due to classified content?
I work with the VHP through my job, as a staffer with a Congressional member in their district office. We usually try to get high school students involved with the project by encouraging them to talk to veterans in the community and in their families, though I've submitted several narratives on behalf of several veterans. I love this project, and I love that there is a place for their stories and the things that meant something to these veterans at one time (the diary for instance, and photographs.)
Thank you for all of the work you do!
Do you accept typed transcriptions of letters? My mom has hundreds of letters that her mom saved during WWII that were sent to her from my grandpa. I am going through them letter by letter and typing them up to preserve them for posterity. They are written in cursive as was the style at the time and the ability to read cursive, especially when it isn't good penmanship, is fading away.
I think I'm getting close to being done with the letters and once my mom, aunt and uncle have a chance to read them we are looking at historical/veterans societies that may be interested in them. I don't know if my mom would part with the physical letters but they would be willing to share the typed manuscript.
If it helps, my Grandpa was drafted in 1942 into the Army and after training was assigned as a field medic to the 808th Tank Destroyer Battalion with which he deployed to Europe in September 1944 and saw combat including in Luxembourg during the Battle of the Bulge.
Does the project also compile interviews from soldiers from the other side, such as Germany?
I have 600 letters from my Grandfather to my Grandmother, written from Oct. '41 to March '46. I'd be happy to contribute, but more pressing is how to efficiently digitize such a collection?
Guam has the highest enlistment rate in the US, and their soldiers have the unique identity of being US soldiers and living through a foreign occupation.
So why is Guam not on the states and territories list, even though you can find some of them if you search by race?
Also, how do you feel about Congress continuing to deny reparations to the locals of Guam from WWII?
I presume that in your work you come into contact with lots of ... shall we say "negative" stories. After all the saying goes, "War is hell". Does exposure to such stories take a mental toll on you? If it does, how do you deal with it?
Occasionally, someone on reddit posts their "grandfather's photos" or something that the reddit community seems to think is worthy of preservation. A recent example is [photos of Nagasaki shortly after the bomb was dropped]:(https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/3z2f2k/a_rare_look_at_nagasaki_after_fat_man_taken_by_my/).
What's the best thing to do with these to bring them to the attention of those who might be interested?