The Veterans History project is a project of the American Folk Life Center of the Library of Congress with a mission to collect the memories, accounts, and documents of war veterans from World War I, World War II, and the Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf Wars.

You are invited to join us in this important national project. This project will honor our nation’s war veterans and those who served in support of them by creating a lasting legacy of record interviews and other documents chronicling veteran’s and other citizens’ wartime experiences and how those experiences affected their lives and America itself.

Today’s generation and future Americans have much to learn from those who served. A national collection of personal histories on audio and video tape as well as letters, diaries, maps photographs and home movies will be of immeasurable value to historians, educators, students, authors, filmmakers and family members.

Our goals:

------- To stimulate the opportunities for public learning by inviting, advising, and supporting individuals and groups to participate in the Veterans History Project.

------- To engage veterans, military, history, educational, and civic organizations as partners to identify, interview, and collect documents from war veterans and those who served in support of them.

------- To preserve and present the collected materials to the public, through the Library of Congress’s exhibitions, publications, public programs and Web site.

------- To identify veterans oral history programs and archives; to recognize and work with them to expand the Veterans History Project initiative.

------- To create a comprehensive, searchable, national catalog of all oral histories and documents collected as a result of this project.


“We can’t all be heroes. Some of us have to stand on the curb and clap as they go by.” ----- Will Rogers

Project contact information

Veterans History Project
Library of Congress
American Folklife Center
101 Independence Avenue S.E.
Washington, DC 20540-4615

Email us
Phone: 1-888-371-5848
Fax: 1-202-252-2046

Veterans History Project