The Vietnam Archive

The Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University was founded in 1989 in Lubbock, Texas, with the goal of collecting and preserving the history of American involvement in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Beginning with a handful of letters from a sailor from Slaton, Texas, and a milk crate of donated books, the Archive has expanded to over 20 million pages of material and is the largest and most significant collection about the conflict in Southeast Asia outside of the U.S. federal government.

The Virtual Vietnam Archive is one of the most dynamic archives in existence, with more than 30,000 pages of new material being added each month. The Archive houses more than 1,200 collections that contain documents, diaries, letters, newspapers, photographs, slides, maps, periodicals, films, audio and video recordings, and other materials. It also includes recorded interviews with veterans and others whose lives were affected by the conflict. The archive is growing at a remarkable rate and received 465 collection donations in 2004 alone.

In an effort to make the collections more accessible, the Archive purchased STAR to create a web version of the archive, called the Virtual Vietnam Archive. This online research database and artifact retrieval system includes digitized versions of non-copyrighted material from the collections in the Vietnam Archive. The Virtual Archive currently contains more than 2 million pages and 250,000 discreet items. Researchers who visit the Virtual Archive can access documents, photographs, maps, oral history interviews, audio and video files, and more. The online holdings include memorabilia donated by individuals who served in Vietnam and Southeast Asia as well as individuals active in theater and on the home front. Additional collection materials come from the U.S. Presidential Libraries (Truman through Ford) as well as from many U.S. government agencies including the Departments of State and Defense, the CIA, and the U.S. military branches.

"STAR and the Virtual Vietnam Archive allow researchers around the world with access to the unique and important historical materials in the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University," Archivist Stephen Maxner recently said. "With STAR, researchers no longer have to travel all the way to Lubbock, Texas, and endure the expenses of onsite research. Anyone with Internet access can use these free online resources. This is important to scholars but also allows students at all levels of study, teachers, veterans and the interested public unparalleled access to historical materials. This allows everyone to learn first hand about this remarkable aspect of 20th Century U.S. History. STAR makes this all possible through its remarkable flexibility, speed, and ease of use."

The Vietnam Archive Web Site is open to the public.

URL: http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/