Preservation of Personal Wartime Stories

Since Memorial Day was yesterday, I thought I would present a piece on how the nation is preserving the history of our veterans. In my research, I found a project that I had not heard of going on through the Library of Congress. This year marks the ten year anniversary of the Veterans' History Project. Its mission is to record the oral history of living veterans and collect memoriablia from family members. The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress took control of the project when it was passed in legistaltion through Public Law 106-380.

The project really began to take off one year later at an event at the Library of Congress on November 8, 2001. A twenty-six memeber advisory board, called the Five-Star Council, was created to oversee the project. This board included several congresspeople, veterans, librains, and historians. The board met with Library of Congress' Dr. Billington and the director of the Veterans' History Project, Ellen McCullouch-Lovell. At that inital meeting, members of the board had several ideas about how a project should happen and who should be included. Several members brought up the importance of young people conducting the interviews of the veterans to help make connections with the elders in their own family of community. Legislation had only included World War I and II, Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gult, but the council insisted that current soldiers be included who were fighting in Afghanistan at the time. Retired Maj. Gen. Jeanne Hom brought up the point of including non-combative veterans who had jobs like truck driving, clerks, or nurses.

One article I found focused on the experience of a Local History and Reference Librarian, Richard Baranoski at Way Public Library in Perrysburg, Ohio. Baranoski had been recorded the oral history of locals for several years before he became apart of the VHP. The regional partner in the project was the University of Toledo. One of the cooridnator volunteers there was named Andrew Fisher. Fisher became connected to Baranoski through publicity of library events geared towards local veterans. He was then invited to talk at the library to recruit people who might want to be interviewed. Within a few months, the men together had taken forty personal histories to be added to the ongoing collection.

It was because of the power of local libraries that ten years later, the Library of Congress has collected 68,000 personal oral histories, making it the largest collection of oral histories in the United States. It was the dedication of citizens around the country and decision that preserving this type of information was a prority that allowed it to be something our future citizens can look back on.

As librarians, how do you decide what projects your library should take part in?

Now that almost 68,000 have been collected, should the nation keep collecting stories for all of the wars or should their be a cap on many should be preserved?

If you or anyone you know is interesten participating in the project, visit the website and click on How to Participate.

Refrences

Fineberg, Gail (2001). Learning From Those Who Served. Library of Congress Information Bulletin, 60 (11)

Baranowski, Richard (2009). Now Hear This! Veterans' Stories Live on in Oral Narratives as Local Library Assists in Congresional History Project. Public Library, 48(2)

10 Years of Veterans' History: Veterans' History Project Marks Milestone (2010). Library of Congress Information Bulletin, 69 (1/2)