Veterans Oral History Collection Database

The Military Collection’s North Carolina Veterans Oral History Collection Database consists of the details of the more than 1,100 oral history interviews in the collection. The database is fully searchable as an Excel spreadsheet. The database includes: interview collection number, interview title, interviewer and interviewee names, interview date, short biographies of the veterans, and a description of the formats of the interview recordings. The biographies are based on available public records, personal papers of the interviewees, obituaries, and other available information. The biographies are not always 100% accurate, as they were often without listen to the entire interview (as a number of interviews are in an analog, non-accessible format at present).

The majority of the interviews are on analog recordings (such as audiocassette tapes and VHS tapes) or formatted discs, for which there are no high-quality digital transfers available. A number of interviews have low-quality audio files available, which can be accessed onsite at the State Archives of North Carolina through the Military Collection Archivist’s office. A number of discs have reference copies available for use onsite at the State Archives. Some transcripts are available for a number of interviews as well. If an access copy of the interview is not available, a patron can order a digital copy of the interview recordings through the State Archives’ outsourced digitization policy.

Interviews conducted since 2015 are available online through the Veterans Oral History Collection in the North Carolina Digital Collections.