The library will honor our local veterans with a “Salute to Veterans” program on June 14, 2008 in the Community Room.

Please join us for the afternoon. There will be presentations by the Alliance Library System/Mid Illinois Talking Book Center (MITBC) and WILL-TV. Alliance Library System/MITBC will share a one-hour program that will provide information about the Illinois Veterans History Project and the Library of Congress Veterans History Project.

A Wartime Trivia game will be part of the program. It will test and increase your knowledge, and you just might win a prize. Information about organizing, documenting, recording and interviewing local veterans, their family members and others with wartime experiences will be available for families and community groups. WILL-TV has produced several features containing interviews with local veterans as part of their World War II Project and will be showing them as part of the program.

On October 27, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed legislation which established the Veterans’ History Project. This law charged the Library of Congress with the responsibility of collecting and preserving the wartime memories of our nations veterans and those civilians who supported the war efforts. The Illinois Veterans History Project was launched by Secretary of State and State Librarian Jesse White in November 2005. The project is designed to create a permanent record of the names and remembrances of American war veterans and civilians who served during times of war. Memoirs of deceased veterans may also be shared.

The Illinois Patriot forms are available at all public libraries and driver services facilities throughout Illinois. These forms allow veterans and their families to fill out Patriot Information Forms and preserve the heroic stories of the men and women who have served our nation. The forms are then sent to the Illinois State Archives.

In September 2007, the Secretary of States’ office expanded the project to include oral recorded histories. The histories are available through the Illinois Digital Archives. In addition, the Patriot Information Forms that are submitted to the Illinois State Archives are being scanned and digitized. The Salute to Veterans program will provide the community with an opportunity to honor our area veterans and others who served in World War I, World War II, and the Korean, Vietnam, Persian Gulf and Iraq wars. 

Links

• Illinois Digital Archives
  Click on Browse collections and then Illinois Veterans Project to see completed histories:
  http://www.idaillinois.org
• The Library of Congress Veterans History Project:
  http://www.loc.gov/vets

Event Details

This event begin at 1:30 p.m. on June 14 in the library’s Community Room. The day’s lineup includes:

• A one-hour program about the Illinois Veterans History Project and the Library of Congress Veterans History project
  
• Wartime Trivia
  
• Lessons in organizing, documenting, interviewing and recording veterans’ histories as well as histories shared by family members and others with wartime experience;
  
• Viewing of WILL-TV features highlighting interviews with local veterans.