At Grand Valley State University, undergraduate students get hands-on experience preserving the memory and voices of the many men and women of West Michigan who have served in the United States military. In 2006, Grand Valley joined the ranks of participants in the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project. Faculty in the History and Communications departments connect with West Michigan veterans and conduct video-recorded oral history interviews, following guidelines established by the Library of Congress. The GVSU project then employs a team of undergraduate students each semester to edit videos, create interview outlines, and write descriptive metadata records for the interviews. As videos are deposited in the Library of Congress for safekeeping, they are also submitted to Grand Valley’s Special Collections and University Archives to be included in our Digital Collections.

This article provides background on the project and use of the Veterans History Project materials in the classroom, highlights the unique learning experience of the undergraduate student workers, and explains the strategies and technologies being undertaken to preserve the oral histories.

The Veterans History Project is one of Grand Valley’s most heavily used digital collections, and contains more than 1,100 interviews available online. These first-hand accounts of veterans from all U.S. military branches who served during conflicts dating back to World War II are told in both video oral histories and text. Some participants submit their personal memorabilia to be scanned and included in the Digital Collection of GVSU’s Special Collections and University Archives. Others have donated personal papers, photographs, and artifacts as permanent collections.