Veterans Day season is understandably a traditionally busy time for the Veterans History Project (VHP) staff and supporters. With media interviews, performances, workshops, exhibits, veteran/Gold Star family member interview opportunities and ceremonies, this year was certainly no different.  As we bask in the afterglow of successfully sharing stories through multiple mediums, I would be remiss ..read more

The Library kicks off Black History Month with a new By the People crowdsourcing project -- transcribing the papers in the William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection ..read more

When looking for images of winter warmth and light for a recent Flickr album, I went off on a searching tangent and happened upon a group of photographs that piqued my interest. All the photos, from the Harris & Ewing Collection, date from 1917 (though contemporary newspaper coverage dates the event in the photos to ..read more

George S. Patton kept a personal journal during his involvement in the 1916 Mexican Expedition. While serving as aide-de-camp to General John J. Pershing, he recorded many observations of the military campaign against Pancho Villa’s forces - everything from day to day activities, to the first use of airplanes by the U.S. Army in a combat roll and its last use of mounted cavalry. This is the first of many wartime diaries that Patton kept during his military career ..read more

World War I had a wide ranging impact on Europe and the United States particularly in the management of news, information, and propaganda. Join the Library of Congress Manuscript Division and author John M. Hamilton on November 10 at 12 noon for a discussion of the Committee on Public Information (CPI) and its influence on civil liberties, news gathering, and the issuance of propaganda in the United States and abroad ..read more

The following is a guest blog post by Justina Moloney, an archivist at the Veterans History Project (VHP). People often ask me to explain what an archivist does, and though there are a multitude of different ways I could explain my profession, I generally say, “Oh, I’m a librarian of old things.” While librarians and ..read more

The concluding part of this two-part survey of music and disease looks at examples that arose from pandemics in the 19th and 20th centuries, including: works by Stephen Foster and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel written in the wake of a series of cholera outbreaks, and the sometimes curiously lighthearted musical response to the 1918 influenza pandemic ..read more

The last Sunday in September marks Gold Star Mothers and Family’s day- a day for our nation to show our profound gratitude and respect for the families of our fallen.  Last year, the Library of Congress invited Gold Star families to join us so that we could celebrate the lives, service and love of their ..read more

France, Brazil, and the United States: Learn about Darius Milhaud's major musical inspirations ..read more

In the first year of WWI an official truce for Christmas failed. But a sudden rise of the Christmas Spirit created a phenomenon—the soldiers decided not to fight on Christmas day. British and German soldiers left the trenches to celebrate together ..read more