Forty-three years ago today the North Vietnamese launched a massive countrywide attack against almost all of the major cities and province capitals in South Vietnam, breaking the truce called for the Tết holiday and forever changing the course of the war.  This countrywide assault became known as the Tet Offensive.  To commemorate this historic event, the staff of the Vietnam Archive have created exhibits detailing the events of the Tet Offensive and three of the offensive’s major battles: Hue – the Imperial City, the Battle of Khe Sanh, and the Battle for Saigon.  In addition to the exhibits, there is a new subject guide to help people locate materials about the Tet Offensive in our collection.  Links to the exhibits and subject guide are below. 

U.S. soldiers move into the alley behind BOQ #3 in Saigon. 31 Jan. 1968 Photo by: SP5 Edgar Price Pictorial A.V. Plt. 69th Sig. Bn

The Tet Offensive

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/exhibits/Tet68/

Tet Offensive Subject Guide

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/resources/tet

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!

The Vietnam Archive has a collection of over 12,000 Marine Corps records covering after-action reports, command chronologies and other documents for most of the Marine units serving in Vietnam.  These records,shared with the archive by the Marine Corps History Division, are a valuable resource for anyone researching the Marines in the Vietnam War. 

These records have been available in the Virtual Vietnam Archive for many years.  However, many of the records were incorrectly labeled or could only be found in the database using specialized terms.  After extensive database work, the Vietnam Archive archivists have fixed the errors and removed the specialized jargon terms so that the records are much easier to locate. 

In addition to these fixes, the documents themselves are now fully word-searchable.  The Vietnam Archive has undertaken a project to convert all of the over 3 million pages of digitized documents in the Virtual Vietnam Archive into word-searchable PDFs, and the conversion of the Marine Corps documents is now complete. Please note that the quality of the word-search capability is dependent on a number of factors, including the quality of the original.  The worse the condition of the original scan, the lower the accuracy of the word-search function.  To search for words within the PDF’s (in Adobe Reader), simply open the PDF, hold down the Ctrl key and F key and type in your keyword and hit enter.  If the word is in the document, you will be taken to the page where the word is located, and the word will be highlighed with color – a great timesaving device.

As PDFs are converted into the word-searchable format, some users may be required to update to newer versions of their PDF readers.  Versions of Adobe Reader older than Version 6 will not be able to access the modified PDFs, or PDFs newly added to the Virtual Archive.  Adobe Reader can be downloaded free from the Adobe website – http://get.adobe.com/reader/?promoid=BUIGO

If you have not seen the Marine Corps records check out the new and improved version in the Virtual Archive. They are worth a look.

Tet, the Vietnamese New Year
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 ushers 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

The registration form for the Vietnam Center’s upcoming Seventh Triennial Vietnam Symposium is now available online.  Registration form and payment must be received by March 1st, 2011.  Please note that due to hotel catering requirements, late and onsite registration will not include any meals.

The symposium will take place March 10-12, 2011 at the Overton Hotel in Lubbock, TX.  A special room rate of $85 is available until February 7, 2011.  For more information, please visit http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/events/2011_Symposium/ 

The agenda for this symposium will be posted at the link above once it becomes available.

Registration Form Link: http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/events/2011_symposium/registration2011.php