The American Folklife Center (AFC) continued its mandate to "preserve and present American folklife" through a number of outreach programs such as the Veterans History Project (VHP) and "Save Our Sounds."
Established by Congress in 2000, the purpose of the Veterans History Project is to record and preserve first-person accounts of armed services personnel who served during wartime, as well as those who supported them on the homefront. During the year the VHP staff continued to gather veterans stories and make them accessible on the project's Web site at www.loc.gov/folklife/vets. To date the project has collected more than 80,000 items veterans and their families. On Memorial Day 2004 the VHP staff participated in the dedication of the World War II Memorial by conducting oral histories of veterans on the National Mall in Washington.
"Save Our Sounds," a joint program with the Smithsonian Institution and supported by the White House Millennium Council's "Save America's Treasures" program, seeks to preserve a priceless heritage of sound recordings housed at the two institutions. Now in its fourth year, nearly all of the eight collections earmarked for preservation have been digitized and made accessible on the Library's American Memory Web site. Several new collections have been identified for preservation as part of this continuing project.
