Vietnam Center & Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive News and Updates

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Vietnam Center and Archive Receives Three Year Grant to Digitize FVPPA Files

The Vietnam Center and Archive has received a three year, $144,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to digitize the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) files of the Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association Collection (FVPPA).  This collection of approximately 250,000 pages is comprised of the records of more than 10,000 Vietnamese applying to immigrate to the United States following the end of the Vietnam War.  Many of the applicants were former re-education camp detainees.

The FVPPA collection, brought to the Archive in 2005 by the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation, is one of the largest and most significant collections available to researchers studying the Vietnamese American immigration experience.  The ODP files, according to Associate Director Mary Saffell are  “as important to the study of Vietnamese Americans as the Ellis Island records are to the families of immigrants from the early 20th century.”

It is expected that digitization, which will begin in February, will take three years to complete.  As the items are digitized, they will be added to the Virtual Vietnam Archive.  You can also follow the progress of the project and see recently digitized files from the collection at http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vahp/digitization.php.

This is the second grant the Center has received from the NHPRC for this collection, including funding received in 2008 to originally process the collection.

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