Hi, we are the staff of the Library of Congress’s 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, scrapbooks, and other documents. We have over 100,000 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 include either an audio or video interview of 30 minutes or longer, 10 or more original photographs, letters, or other documents, or a written memoir, diary, or journal of 20 pages or more.
To ensure these collections are accessible for generations to come, we stabilize, preserve and securely store them for posterity according to standards developed by the Library of Congress. Our materials are available to researchers and the general public, either by viewing the original materials in person at the American Folklife Center’s Reading Room in the Library of Congress’s Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C. or by visiting our website (http://www.loc.gov/vets) and viewing the more than 33,000 collections available online.
Staff who will be answering questions are:
Col. Karen Lloyd US Army (Ret.) (Whirleygirl09), Director of VHP
Monica Mohindra (VHP_ComsMngr_Monica), Head of Program Coordination and Communication
Andrew Cassidy-Amstutz (VHPArchivist_Andrew), Archivist
Andrew Huber (VHPSpecialist_Andrew), Liaison Specialist
From 9:30am-12:30pm 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.
We will do our best to answer every question we receive before 12:30pm, but feel free to continue asking questions afterwards. VHP staff will be actively monitoring the page and we’ll continue answering questions as they arrive.
Also, please sign up for our RSS feed here, read our blog here, and like our Facebook page 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.
Thanks for doing this! Can you post links to some of the interviews or documents you find personally fascinating? Like great stories of valor?
This question is more about the Library of Congress in general - what is your favorite item in the Library's collection?
Though it wasn't much noticed in the West, Svetlana Alexievich won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature primarily for her oral histories, particularly her oral histories of the Second World War and the Soviet War in Afghanistan, and also the Chernobyl disaster and the Fall of the Soviet Union.
This leads me to three distinct questions: what's the purpose of your archive? And what more broadly is the purpose of oral history? Alexievich work is pretty implicitly political, but I imagine your view your work as apolitical. She views her work as "monuments to suffering", but I doubt that's how you see your own work. How do you see your work?
While you make your work available to the public online and in person, have you or anyone else condensed some of the primary sources you have into a more traditional oral history book, the kind that Alexievich and other oral historians write/produce? Or do you really think of yourself more as purely archivists, collecting the work for historians and later generations to comb through?
Third, does your archive include the family members of veterans? Alexievich's first two books focused on women and children, respectively, during World War II, and I'm curious if you do anything to get the experiences not just of the men and women who went off to fight for their country, but the people who loved them and stayed behind?
You now must have several generations of soldiers memories. You include journals, so I imagine your collections may go back to the founding of our Republic. (Edit you mention in comments that the earliest records currently in your collections are from WWI)
What differences do you notice over time? Does each war or era have a distinct feeling? Do the people in the different branches of the armed forces have different voices?
What are some things that once showed up all the time, and now hardly show up at all? And conversely, what's something that has become much more prominent in recent years?
And what are the constants, the things that our veterans talk about across all eras?
What materials are the most difficult to preserve?
If I have material that is personally meaningful, can I (or will VHP) digitize it instead of submitting originals, or do you only want originals?
Do you all travel around to collect oral histories and other material?
Thanks for doing this, what a great project :-)
Hello and thank you for being here!
I'm currently preparing for a research project on the Kit Carson Scouts during the Vietnam War and I've been picking a few things from your great collection.
Considering the great amount of immigrants that has moved to the United States after participating in the side of the United States, such as the Vietnamese diaspora after the Vietnam War, have you ever thought of including the stories and recollections of immigrants that fought alongside US troops? (given that they are now living in the US that is).
How do you index your collections? Is there some sort of keywording or meta tagging? Who does it and to what level of detail?
I helped transcribe the interviews as a part time job in college. It really opened my eyes to the different experiences from each guy who served! Thank you for this keeping this service going.
All of the interviews I transcribed were either from WW2 or Vietnam veterans. Have there, or will there be, interviews from the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq?
What is the oldest piece of material you have in your collection and what did you find particularly enlightening about the content?
What is the worst act of humanity that you guys have recorded?
People probably get emotional during some of your interviews. How do you handle talking about possibly difficult issues with people? And presumably, some interviews touch you emotionally as well. How do remain composed if and when that happens?
Are the stories and memoirs of veterans from recent wars and past wars somewhat similar in what they usually tell or say? For example, an infantryman in the second world war, compared to the same in the Gulf War or Vietnam War.
Thanks for doing this folks! My question is something of a multi parter.
How did the experience of drafted soldiers differ from volunteer soldiers? In popular media they are often portrayed as receiving more dangerous/less desirable infantry assignments than those who volunteered. Is there any patterns in the oral history differentiating volunteers vs drafted?
Hi, thank you for being here and for the work that you do to preserve the stories of veterans. Does the VHP include the fascinating story of Louie Zamperini from the book Unbroken? Related, do you ever reach out to particular individuals to solicit their stories?
are you hiring? I live in the DC area and have a masters degree in history. How can I help even in an unpaid way?
Were there any stories that revealed new things about the US in WWII, that you (or historians) didn't know of before?
Do you have any records on The Fenian Raids? I'm doing a thesis on them and its quite hard to find any first hand accounts of them.
You wanna hear the story about getting drunk with my Drill Sergeant during AIT, tearing ass down range at Ft. Benning in his mustang, and tossing our empty beer cans at folks on road marches?
It's not a story that has any heroes.
A friend of mine was a WW2 vet in the pacific, he passed away over a decade ago. He used to tell me stories about flying from india to china over the himalayas and also trying to recover downed us airmen from --then neutral -- tibet using a radio link from kathmandu, the only radio in the country. Do you know anything else about this?
I work for the Veterans History Project at the University of Central Florida! I am sad i missed an opportunity to talk with the people I regularly submit interviews to! UCF will be hitting our 500th interview by the end of the year, if we haven't already.