In honor of the Veterans History Project's 25th anniversary, we’re highlighting photographs and stories from six compelling collections that offer personal and visual perspectives on military service across more than a century of conflicts, from World War I through the war in Iraq.
William Munro found time to sketch and draw hundreds of pieces of art while serving during World War II. Working as a medic and supply clerk in the Army's medical battalion in North Africa and Europe, Munro sketched everything from scenes of war to lush landscapes to the camraderie of his fellow soldiers. His letters and some 370 artworks are in his collection at the Veterans History Project.
The Veterans History Project was founded by Congress in 2000. Since then, it has grown into an archive of stories from over 121,000 U.S. military veterans. The service records, letters, diaries, photographs and other memorabilia spans generations and gives a unique, moving view of what it means to serve in the U.S. military.
During World War II, the Office of War Information recorded news and American propaganda onto 16-inch discs which were then broadcast domestically and overseas. The Library acquired tens of thousands of these discs after the war and has been working to preserve them ever since. Colin Hochstetler, a Library Junior Fellow, talks about his work with these time-capsule discs in this question-and-anwer session.
The Library's American Folklife Center and the Mellon Foundation have teamed up over the past several years to set up a series of grants that help preserve traditions that may otherwise be absent from the national record. For the most recent year, these include dances of the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi, artistic creations of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma and traditional Hawaiian music. These works are then preserved in Library collections for future generations.
The Library of Congress has released a groundbreaking online collection of the National AIDS Memorial Quilt Records, making one of the most poignant symbols of the AIDS epidemic in the United States available to a global audience.
In this edition of "My Job" at the Library, Aimee Hess talks about her work in editing and producing books that highlight the Library’s collections. She oversees the Library's Crime Classics series, has written two books in the "Women Who Dare" series and cowritten two books: one on the suffrage exhibition, “Shall Not Be Denied"; and one about the Library's photograph collections, “The Joy of Looking."
The folklorist Sidney Robertson was one of the trailblazing American women of the 1930s and 1940s, the kind of life you’d associate with Martha Gellhorn, Dorothea Lange or Zora Neale Hurston. Her work directing the California Folk Music Project from 1938-40 is the subject "California Gold," a new book from the Library and the University of California Press.
