Military Monday – Veterans History Project

Editor's note: Today's post was written by Richard Hanson.

Many of you are forever researching and, for a variety of reasons, are not yet ready to to publish something like a book. An unpublished and undistributed collection is always in peril. The owner may pass way. Collections by be destroyed by either a physical or digital disaster. Publishing is the solution. But there are relatively easy publishing solutions. One such easy solution is donating files (informational, image, audio/video) to an institution.

The Veterans History Project, sponsored by the U.S. Library of Congress, collects stories plus supporting files pertaining to military veterans and certain types of civilian workers for World War I through the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. Their website describes the submittal procedure. After the donation is processed, it will be physically housed at the Library of Congress facility in Washington, DC. About ten percent are currently searchable and posted on their website.

Six years ago I submitted a story and photos on my father's service in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. Unfortunately it was not yet part of that lucky 10% that is accessible on their website.

Veterans History Project

http://www.loc.gov/vets/vets-home.html

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New Resource: Map of Federal Libraries

The National Genealogical Society (NGS) always has informative articles on its blog, UpFront with NGS.  By subscribing to the NGS blog email service, I learned about the Federal Library Directory, an interactive map from the Library of Congress.  A portion of the news release is below.

October 28, 2011, Washington, D.C.: Profiles of U.S. federal libraries from around the world are now available online. Presented dynamically with an interactive mapping tool, the Federal Library Directory displays geographic and collections data from more than 1,000 libraries. This publicly available dataset identifies members of the federal library and information center community and offers current information on their locations, collections, services and specialties.  Read more of the press release which includes a link to important information about using the interactive maps.  There is a caveat: The mapping software is only viewed using the Mozilla Firefox browser and the link provided loads slowly.  If you are unable to use Firefox, a pdf file of the directory is available.

posted by Denise Hibsch Richmond

Treasure Chest Thursday - C-SPAN - Library of Congress Video

C-SPAN Video Library -- The Library of Congress

Posted: 01 Sep 2011 05:00 AM PDT by Upfront with NGS (National Genealogical Society)

 

Interested in learning more about the Library of Congress? 

Check out this video (1 hour, 31 minutes) created by C-Span.

C-SPAN's original feature documentary, The Library of Congress, is a behind-the-scenes look at the national repository, providing the history of the institution, a tour of its iconic Jefferson Building, and glimpses of some of the library's rare book, photo, and map collections. The film also featured some of the presidential papers housed at the Library of Congress, ranging from George Washington through Calvin Coolidge. Viewers learned how the library uses technology to preserve its holdings and expand public access to them, as well as how technology is helping to uncover new information about some of the items in its collections.

This is a well done video!

A search on “genealogy” in the archives yielded references to the following:

·        Regulation of Genetic Testing & Genetic Testing and Privacy

·        Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave

·        Chinese America: The Untold Story

 Library of Congress Video on NGS website

posted by Sandra Gardner Benward for Treasure Chest Thursday