We thank Kerry Ward and the staff of Folklife Today for allowing us to repost this, originally published just prior to Veterans Day. We hope you will take the opportunity to visit the revised website and consider contributing interviews with the veterans in your communities.
How are you planning to commemorate this Veterans Day?
There are many ways to show gratitude for the veterans in your life. Can you guess the one I would suggest?
Show appreciation to the veteran in your life by helping them collect and preserve their military memories so that they may be accessible through the Library of Congress Veterans History Project.
We’ve made it easier than ever…
The Veterans History Project (VHP) is delighted to unveil our redesigned website in honor of Veterans Day 2022. The site has been updated with user-friendly search features to access the summary service records for over 114,000 veterans and counting. These records contain more than 9,000 hours of audio recordings, 7,000 hours of video and thousands of original photographs and pages of correspondence. Whether you are interested in watching a family member’s oral history or researching “Dear John letters,” the site is here to provide ample archival resources.
But wait, there’s more…
With this relaunch, VHP’s website now includes:
- Easier access to curated content including Research Guides and StoryMaps.
- Step-by-step customized participation instructions, so whether you are a veteran wanting to share your story, a volunteer conducting an interview, a scout leading others through the process, a teacher or a Gold Star Family member—we’ve written guidance just for you.
- Links to sample interview questions that you can easily download and tailor to your veteran’s experiences.
- Improved search capabilities that feature military branch, service location, conflicts, interviews and more. The increased discoverability within the larger loc.gov provides results to more than 114,000 veteran collections.
- Fillable forms to make it convenient for both veterans and contributors to complete, electronically sign, print and submit along with their collections
- Registration links and announcements for upcoming programs and events, access to press releases, event videos and a VHP timeline dating back over two decades.
In addition to the new, comprehensible design, we look forward to sharing our new curated collections display, “Serving: Our Voices,” featuring the first-person narratives of U.S. veterans who served from World War I through the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan who have donated their materials to the Library of Congress. Serving as a replacement for the “Experiencing War” online exhibit, this new display can be found at www.loc.gov/programs/veterans-history-project/explore-the-collections/serving-our-voices/. The exhibit enables deeper public connection to veteran experiences, and easier ways to share those collections across platforms.
Make history this Veterans Day by checking out the new website (loc.gov/vets) and preparing to create a lasting legacy of service within our nation’s Library so that future generations will come to learn from and possibly even be inspired by their stories of service.
Comments (4)
Please correct the link “The Veterans History Project (VHP)” in the article as it is not working. You never make it clear what is the new link to the VHP. This should be highlighted boldly.
Thanks for letting us know. The link has been fixed.
Please offer remote/virtual internships with the LoC’s VHP!
You may want to reach out to the VHP staff or the people in the Internships and Fellowships Office. There is a fellowship sponsored by the American Folklife Center, the division that oversees VHP that may also be of interest. Good luck.