Library of Congress, PBS collecting oral histories of U.S. war vets

WASHINGTON -- The Library of Congress and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) announced today a joint community engagement initiative designed to gather the first-hand recollections of the diverse men and women who served our nation during wartime. The public outreach campaign begins this spring and will be continued beyond the broadcast of Ken Burns's new film,"The War," which airs on PBS beginning September 23, 2007.

The Veterans History Project (VHP), a major program of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center, is an oral history program created by Congress in 2000. VHP depends on volunteer interviewers -- family and friends of veterans, community members and a wide variety of organizations and institutes -- to record one-of-a-kind interviews with wartime veterans and send them to VHP, where they are housed in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress. To date, VHP has collected more than 45,000 individual stories...

WETA Washington, DC, and the Veterans History Project have developed a field guide with a"how-to" conduct an oral history interview, which includes pointers from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick on lighting and shooting the video. Additional information provides tips on how to send recorded interviews to the Veterans History Project.

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Veterans History Project