The Legion's memory bank

January 2012 saw the release of The American Legion Digital Archive, an online database administered by the Legion's National Library and Museum in Indianapolis. Since then, the digital holdings have grown to more than 4,200 contemporary and historical full-text searchable documents, optimized for use on smartphones and tablets. This includes all active resolutions back to 1969, past issues of the national magazine (in all its incarnations) from 1919 through 2013, and the last 10 years of the proceedings of the National Executive Committee and the national conventions.

And that's only part of the holdings. Visitors to the Digital Archive can also find past issues of The American Legion Dispatch, national convention programs and Emblem Sales catalogs going back to 1919, and press releases, brochures, pamphlets and special reports put out by The American Legion.

Yet even with all these collections already online, work continues - "We hope to expand access with additional meeting proceedings, and continue to identify and include those documents that tell the story of The American Legion," said National Librarian & Curator Howard Trace.

The growth of the archive has come alongside the development of plans for the Legion's Centennial Celebration in 2018 and 2019. As posts gather their invididual histories to upload to the Centennial Celebration website, a 2015 story on legion.org can provide tips on using the Digital Archive to find it among the national holdings.