WDVA Wisconsin Veterans Museum Veterans Oral History Program Page

The Wisconsin Veterans Oral History Program seeks to record the experiences of Wisconsin men and women, combat and non-combat veterans, present and former residents of Wisconsin who served in the military from World War II to the present. The program provides recorded information that both compliments and extends the archives, library, and artifact collections of the museum.

With a current collection of over 1000 oral history interviews with Wisconsin veterans, this growing project is used by military historians and researchers throughout the country. K-12 teachers and school children, college students, the media, and veterans groups also make use of the museum's oral history collection, which is cataloged and described on OCLC, a national library database, and on WISCAT, Wisconsin's Union Catalog. Many of the interviews have also been transcribed and, after cataloging, are accessible by veteran's name, conflict, hometown, and subjects discussed.

The Wisconsin Veterans Oral History Program began in June of 1994 with an interview of a World War II D-Day veteran. Approximately 200 interviews were conducted by Dr. Mark Van Ells, the museum's first archivist. Volunteer James McIntosh, MD, continued the work started by Dr. Van Ells and conducted more than 200 interviews from 1999 to 2002. In 2002, the program was expanded to include training packets, workshops, and individualized instruction designed to expand the volunteer force of museum oral history interviewers.

The program is under the direction of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center with the Archives Collections Manager serving as program director. Adult volunteers, who are usually veterans themselves, are trained to conduct the interviews.

We encourage veterans to have their experiences preserved. Veterans may be interested in information on Choosing an Archives and here the Oral History Interview Request Form. If you prefer, email the Archives Collection Manager directly.

Prospective narrators are either self-identified, or identified by museum staff members or volunteer interviewers. Many also donate their military letters, diaries, photographs, scrapbooks, manuals, books, or objects that augment their interviews and help to build the museum's educational and research collections.

The Wisconsin Veterans Museum has a training packet to encourage and teach others about conducting oral history interviews of Wisconsin veterans. After reading through the packet, prospective interview volunteers are encouraged to contact the Archives Collection Manager.

Interview materials are in an Oral History Training Packet Adobe Acrobat PDF file. This file contains all the below listed titles with bookmarks to each. When the Acrobat file opens, click on the Bookmarks tab, click on the desired title ("bookmark"). You may also access each individual title by clicking on the desired one below.

Note: Our training packet forms and documents are posted using pdf (Portable Document Format) files. This allows anyone with an Acrobat Reader to view and print the file from all major computer platforms. If you do not already have an Acrobat Reader program, click on the link below to download the current version free.

Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center
30 W. Mifflin Street
Madison, WI 53703
Phone: (608) 267-1790
Fax: (608) 264-7615
Email: Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center