This Memorial Day, learn how to share Veterans stories at the Library of Congress

On May 26 and 28, the Veterans History Project staff at the Library of Congress will host a series of developmental opportunities, as well as performances drawn from their collection of Veteran history material.

As a crowd-sourced archive of Veterans’ original materials, the Veterans History Project provides volunteers with methods to collect oral histories, manuscripts, photographs and original artwork of Veterans. To date, these “citizen historians” have preserved more than 100,000 Veterans’ original narratives, all of which are accessible either online or at the Library of Congress.

A researcher orientation session will be held on Saturday, May 26 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in Room LJ-139B of the Thomas Jefferson Building and will cover the discovery materials, including both the online database and the retrieval of non-digitized collections.

Later in the afternoon actor Douglas Taurel’s powerful one-person show, “An American Soldier’s Journey Home: The Diary of Irving Greenwald” will be performed. This one hour performance channels the experiences of World War I Veteran Irving Greenwald, whose diary is currently on display in the Library’s “Echoes of the Great War” Southeast Gallery exhibit. The performance is scheduled for 2 p.m. in the Thomas Jefferson Building Coolidge Auditorium.

On Memorial Day, May 28, attendees can learn how volunteer interviewers create the Veterans History Project collections through an oral history workshop lead by the Veterans History Project staff. This free two-hour workshop offers techniques and best practices for both amateur and developing oral historians, and will be held on Monday, May 28 from 10 a.m. to noon in the Veterans History Project Information Center, Room LJ-G51 of the Thomas Jefferson Building.

All events are free and open to the public.

The mission of the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress American Folk life Center is to collect, preserve and make accessible the personal accounts of United States military Veterans so that future generations may hear directly from them and better understand the realities of war.

Learn more at www.loc.gov/vets and share your Veterans History Project initiatives, programs, events and news stories with the Veterans History Project. Email vohp@loc.gov and place “My the Veterans History Project RSS Story” in the subject line.

About the author: Owen Rogers is a liaison specialist for the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress.