Sea Service Oral History Project Moves Forward
03 October 2003
Dr. David F. Winkler

The Naval Historical Foundation is pleased to report encouraging progress in the two year old Sea Service Oral History Project. Through October 1st, the Marine Corps Historical Center, using digitization equipment purchased through funds generously provided to the Foundation by the New York-based Dillon Fund, has produced approximately 4500 CD-ROMs of interviews from the Marine Corps Oral History Collection. This mixture of open-reel and cassette tapes included interviews from Vietnam through Operation IRAQI FREEDOM and was beginning to deteriorate due to age. They also have completed the digitization of most of the Coast Guard's oral history collection. More impressive is that that the Marines have prepared data sheets on 633 interviews and have made entries for 18,400 interviews in their oral history database. In addition, numerous transcriptions of the oral histories have been added to the database. By creating these finding aids and transcriptions, the collections will be much more accessible to the public. The project will continue to work on the Marine Corps oral history collection and will turn its efforts to the Naval Historical Center's collection in the coming year.