The agenda for the 2011 7th Triennial Vietnam Symposium is now available online. The symposium will occur on March 10-12, 2011, at the Overton Hotel and Convention Center in Lubbock. Presenters will speak on a wide variety of topics.
Please note that speakers and the schedule are subject to change, and we will update this agenda as changes become available.
A registration form for the symposium is available online as well.
We hope to see you there!
Tet, the Vietnamese New Year
Today – Friday, February 4th
3:00-5:00 pm
The International Cultural Center’s Hall of Nations, Texas Tech University Campus
This is a free event open to the public.
Traditional Vietnamese food will be served. A special presentation will be given by the Vietnamese Student Association at Texas Tech. Please join us and learn more about the rich heritage and culture that makes Vietnam so remarkable.
February 3, 2011 ushered in the Lunar Year of the Cat. In Vietnam, one of 12 animals of the zodiac represents each year. The cat symbolizes sensitivity, gentleness and kindness. It is said that people born in the year of the cat are compassionate, ambitious and sentimental, but they are often very vulnerable to opportunistic and unscrupulous people.
The Vietnamese people regard Tet as their most important holiday. Food preparation for Tet is very time consuming and often requires days of cooking and, prior to the celebrations, people clean, paint, and decorate their homes. People avoid cleaning during Tet so that good luck will not be “swept away.”
We hope you will be able to join us on February 4, 2011 as we celebrate this special event!
For more information, please call (806) 742-3742 or visit www.vietnam.ttu.edu
Link to event flyer: http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/events/tet/tet2011.pdf
Longtime Vietnam Center and Archive staff member Victoria Lovelady has accepted an exciting new job opportunity with Covenant Health Systems here in Lubbock begining in February. Victoria started with the Archive in 2001 as a temp worker digitizing documents for the Virtual Vietnam Archive. She was soon hired on full-time as an Archival Specialist. Eventually she was placed in charge of our microfilm digitzation project, which she oversaw for a number of years. Since 2008, Victoria has been the Communications Coordinator for the Vietnam Center and Archive, where she produced all of the Center and Archive’s print material, including a redesigned brochure and folder, numerous items for our 20th Anniversary Celebration, and a redesigned Friends of the Vietnam Center Newsletter, for which she won the Association for Women in Communications (AWC) 2009 National Clarion Award for Most Improved Newsletter (Print).
Victoria will be joining Covenant Health Systems as their new Internet Marketing Coordinator. For the past nine years she has been an invaluable member of the Vietnam Center and Archive staff and will be greatly missed. We wish her the best of luck in her new job!
See more images of Christmas in Vietnam from the Virtual Vietnam Archive (link).
In honor of the holidays The Vietnam Center and Archive will be closed from Christmas Eve, December 24, through January 3. Happy Holidays Y’all!
The Vietnam Center and Archive would like to wish everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving.
See more images of Thanksgiving in Vietnam from the Virtual Vietnam Archive (link).
The Combined Document Exploitation Center (CDEC) Microfilm Collection is one of our most often used collections, and one on the most frustrating to access due to its lack of a useful index. The collection contains a variety of documents captured from the North Vietnamese and Vietcong during the war, and is an invaluable resource for researchers. Since 2004, we have been working on adding the materials from this collection to the Virtual Vietnam Archive, and have currently added over 39,000 files (325,000 pages), representing just a fraction of this collection. Thousands of new pages are added each month.
The Vietnam Center and Archive, with the assistance of the Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) and the Texas Tech Computer Science Department, is currently working on a project to make the entire collection available online, including the metadata from the 8-bit coding created by the Filesearch machine during the original filming of the materials during the war.
For more information about CDEC, including a brief history of the collection, instructions for searching for items in the Virtual Vietnam Archive, and our future plans for making the entire collection available online, see our new Combined Document Exploitation Center (CDEC) Collection Digitization Project page.
Links:
The CDEC Collection Digitization Project page – http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/resources/cdec/
The Virtual Vietnam Archive – http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/
This week the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) transferred a number of naval artifacts from the SS Pioneer Commander to the Vietnam Archive. The Pioneer Commander, laid down in 1962 as the SS American Commander, participated in the evacuation of South Vietnam in March 1975 from Danang and Cam Ranh Bay. That month the Pioneer Commander and other Military Sealift Command ships evacuated over 30,000 Americans and South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. In 1981, the Pioneer Commander was transferred to MARAD to become part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet in Beaumont, TX.
The Vietnam Center and Archive’s relationship with MARAD began in 2005 when staff members from the Archive traveled to Suisun Bay in California to remove canvas bunk bottoms and other artifacts off of two ships, the USNS General John Pope and the USNS General Edwin D. Patrick, as part of our Vietnam Graffiti Project.
Artifacts transferred from the Pioneer Commander include an azimuth circle, binnacle, engine order telegraphs, the builder’s plate, navigation lights, a gyro repeater, and a 14 foot-long name plate. In the coming months these items will be processed and images of the artifacts will be made available on the Virtual Vietnam Archive as part of the SS Pioneer Commander (AK-2016) Collection.
We especially want to thank the Maritime Administration for their assistance with this project.
A unique item from the Farley E. Peebles collection is now available online – an aerial photograph and a base layout plan of the Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Vietnam. The layout shows all the buildings, runways, roads, and borders of the base, and the locations of gates, towers, posts, and K-9 posts have been marked.
The aerial photo and the base layout were attached together when they were donated to the archive, but have been separated for preservation purposes. Both items are now available for viewing online as images, and the layout plan is also available as a PDF. This is just one example of the many unique items that are added to the Virtual Vietnam Archive every day.
Link: Tan Son Nhut Air Base, RVN. Aerial photograph and base layout plan
The deadline to submit proposals for the 7th Triennial Symposium is approaching. The Symposium will take place on March 10-12, 2011 at the Overton Hotel and Conference Center in Lubbock, Texas. For more information about the Symposium, see our event page.
May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM), a nationally recognized time to celebrate, acknowledge, and educate on the many achievements and contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans to the United States’ history, culture, and society. May was chosen as APAHM due to two important historical dates and events relating to the contributions of Asian and Pacific Americans to the U.S. taking place in May. First, May 7, 1843 is the date the first Japanese immigrants to the U.S. arrived. Second, May 10, 1869 is when the transcontinental railroad was completed; many Chinese immigrants labored laying the tracks.
The Vietnam Center and Archive celebrates APAHM with our online exhibit featuring materials from our Vietnamese-American Heritage Project Collection, including links to materials and oral history interviews.
