Veterans History Project

Today was my first day in my division, the Veterans History Project. I spent the majority of the day exploring their online database and website by looking at collections and listening to oral history's given by war Vets. Some were very touching and emotional and it was fascinating to see what these collections contain. I am excited to actually start pulling these collections and physically looking through them. I won't be dealing with the audio visual oral history's at all, as I will be working on the over 300 World War I collections. Although they do have a very small handful of World War I Vets with audio interviews. Feel free to go to the link I've included and look at some of the highlighted collections and listen to some narratives, it is fascinating stuff! Although only about 10% of the collection is actually digitized the majority of collections just have information describing the contents of the collection.

This specific link is focused on the Korea War, but if you go below it will list other page releases they've highlighted:

http://www.loc.gov/vets/stories/ex-war-korea.html

I got set up to be able to check out books, and we ventured through the underground tunnels to go to the Folklife Center's reading room in the main Jefferson Library. It was like a maze and it is going to take me a while to feel comfortable doing that on my own without getting lost! One of my supervisors took me out to lunch to a delicious little French cafe. We got to chat more about what they want me to do with the collection and I learned a lot more about the whole project. I had a great day and am looking forward to digging in deeper and accomplishing the goals they have set for me to do while here!

When I got off work I headed over to a welcome reception hosted by the housing I am renting from. They supply all of their apartments, studios, and townhomes to interns in the DC area. This was a great place to meet other interns and I am glad that I went. I even was able to exchange numbers with some other interns and hope we are able to get together this summer. My actual roommates don't arrive until the 20th of this month so I still have a bit of time to myself in the apartment.

image courtesy of The Library of Congress