The Veterans History Project on the Connecticut Digital Archive
In addition to oral history interviews, the Veterans History Project also collects military documents, diaries, memorabilia, newspapers, and photographs that our interviewed veterans have shared with us. We scan or photograph these historic artifacts, return the originals to the veteran, and preserve the scans both at the Library of Congress and on our own website.
When you search our collections, you can find links to these photographs and documents alongside the biographical information about the veteran and the link to their interview:
Like the interviews themselves, these photographs and documents serve as a rich treasure trove of historical information that offer a detailed view of life as an American soldier.
In the past, the Veterans History Project has uploaded these artifacts to CCSU’s servers so that they could be easily viewed online. However, servers can go down, and items on the server may not be very easy to find unless you are searching our database. As librarians and historians, we at the Veterans History Project want to make sure that these artifacts are preserved for the long term and are easy to find for any students of history.
Fortunately, the Elihu Burritt Library at CCSU recently joined the Connecticut Digital Archive. The CTDA is a digital library that is committed to the preservation and discoverability of digital collections representing the state’s unique cultural heritage. Managed by librarians at the University of Connecticut, the CTDA’s members include a diverse collection of libraries, museums, universities, and cultural heritage institutions from all around the state. The CTDA is also a part of the Digital Public Library of America, which means that all of the items in CTDA can be found on their website as well.
For the past two years, librarians at CCSU have been busy moving our digital collections onto the CTDA and creating new collections there as well. Many unique materials from CCSU’s archives and special collections can now be found on CTDA, including CCSU’s historic yearbooks and literary magazines, our collection of Polish Posters, and historic documents such as the letters of Elihu Burritt.
Now, the Veterans History Project is joining those other collections. Almost all of the documents and photographs that the project has collected over the years have already been added to the CTDA, and we have added links to these collections to our database. Now, when you view a veteran’s profile in the VHP database, it will include a link that says “Photos and Documents Archive”. That link will take you to the collection of that veteran’s photos and documents in the CTDA:
We are working on cleaning up the collections so that they are a little easier for visitors to browse, and we continue to add photos and documents as veterans submit them to be a part of our collections.
We are very excited to be able to share this part of veterans’ experiences in this new way. We believe that this will help us ensure that their stories are not only preserved, but are easier for students and researchers to discover. We are committed to making sure that their histories are remembered and shared for generations to come.
