The Vietnam Project is asking website visitors to complete a user experience survey when they visit the Virtual Vietnam Archive and Vietnam Project websites. Participation in the brief, anonymous survey will allow us to better understand how and why our online resources are being used, and will provide important information that we can use to more effectively manage our resources. To complete the survey, please use the link below.

Website User Survey

On September 1, 2005, the Virtual Vietnam Archive started its fifth year of work, resulting from very strong support from the US Congress and funding through the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The Virtual Vietnam Archive continues to grow at a remarkable rate. With more than 2.3 million pages and in excess of 300,000 individual records, it is the largest online archive of Vietnam War related materials in the world. We add approximately 30,000 – 35,000 pages of new material online each month making the Virtual Vietnam Archive a very dynamic electronic research resource.

What is most rewarding about placing archive collections online is the knowledge that they are being used. In 2005, the Virtual Vietnam Archive accommodated nearly 245,000 online research sessions. That means researchers, veterans, and others went online more than 660 times per day to search the Virtual Vietnam Archive for documents and materials. That is more researcher traffic than most of the world’s largest and most important archival facilities. The digital era truly has transformed the way in which historical research is conducted. Virtual Vietnam Archive researchers downloaded more than 934,000 documents, photos, and other online artifacts – a total of more than 1.12 Terabytes of material.

To access these and numerous other online collections, please visit www.vietnam.ttu.edu and access the Virtual Vietnam Archive.

The Vietnam Center will receive a $154,000 grant in July 2004 from the Houston Endowment. The grant will help make millions of pages of material available to researchers world-wide. The collections are currently held on microfilm at the Vietnam Archive and include rare 19th Century newspapers from French Indochina, documents of the United States Government, records of the United States Military Branches, and much more. The grant will be used to purchase a high-speed digital microfilm scanner, which will allow the center to put the microfilm on the internet.
Jesse and Mary Gibbs Jones, established the Houston Endowment in 1937. During 1938, Houston Endowment’s first full year of operation, the foundation donated $14,687, of which $11,285 went to schools and colleges. Over the years, Houston Endowment’s assets have grown to approximately $1.3 billion, enabling the foundation to donate more than $70 million annually to help fulfill the Jones’ vision of a healthy, vibrant community. The Houston Endowment also provided the Texas Tech Vietnam Center with the first Lee Roy Herron Scholarship in 2002, an award presented in honor of a U.S. Marine killed in Vietnam in 1969.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services officially announced that the Vietnam Center will receive $497,050 to fund the Virtual Archive for the fourth consecutive year. This funding will complete the four year, two million dollar project, and will allow for the continual addition of materials into the Virtual Vietnam Archive for many years to come. Congressman Randy Neugebauer initially notified the project of this Congressionally mandated award in December 2003. More information is available in a Lubbock Avalanche-Journal newspaper article (see link below). If you are interested in the Virtual Vietnam Archive project or have any questions or comments, please contact the staff of the Vietnam Archive.

Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
Vietnam Archive Email (vietnamarchive@ttu.edu)

The Virtual Vietnam Archive is entering its second year and has received a great response from the public. Currently, there are 376,277 document pages in the virtual archive, and over 50,000 images available online, with more being added daily.

The Virtual Vietnam Archive

On December 28, 2001, Congressman Larry Combest visited the Vietnam Archive at TTU to announce the reception of an additional $500,000.00 from the United States Government to continue digitizing the materials in its collections. The project is expected to take four years to complete at a cost of approximately $2 million. This additional funding will allow for the continual addition of materials into the Virtual Vietnam Archive as collections are received for many years to come. The Vietnam Archive has received $961,000.00 to date. You can read a local newspaper story about this project which was published in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (see link below). If you are interested in the Virtual Vietnam Archive Project or have any questions or comments, please contact the Vietnam Archive Staff.

Lubbock Avalanche-Journal Article
Vietnam Archive Email

The Virtual Vietnam Archive is now open to the public. You can access documents, photographs, and other materials online at the Virtual Archive Web Page (see link below).

Virtual Vietnam Archive Entry Page

The Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University received $461,000.00 from the United States Government in order to digitize the materials in its collections. The Virtual Vietnam Archive will make available to an international audience vast amounts of materials related to the Wars in Southeast Asia. All online materials will be indexed allowing for keyword search capability and the rapid retrieval of digital copies of documents, photographs, slides, and other archival materials. People who donate materials to the Vietnam Archive will benefit form knowing that their materials can be made accessible to a global audience through the internet. Researchers, students, and the interested public will be able to view original documentation from the convenience of their computers at home, school, work, the library, and anywhere else they have internet access. The project is expected to take four years to complete at a cost of approximately $2 million. The infrastructure created and personnel supported with this federal funding will allow for the continual addition of materials into the Virtual Vietnam Archive as new collections are received for many years to come.

Lubbock Avalanche-Journal Article