The American Legion National Library and Museum administers the Digital Archive, which represents the library's digital holdings. The Digital Archive captures, distributes and preserves digital products of the national organization of The American Legion. Here you can find the proceedings of national meetings, reports, brochures, post and officer manuals, and serial publications in various digital formats. Content grows daily as new collections and items are added to the Digital Archive.
The American Legion Digital Archive is organized around collections that correspond to the administrative entities and publications of the national organization including the National Executive Committee, National Convention, The American Legion Dispatch, etc. Within each collection there are a number of related collections. Each collection may contain an unlimited number of items.
Return to the Digital Archive.
To search all collections, use the search box at the top of the navigation bar on the left side of the page.
To limit your search to a specific group of collections or collection, navigate to that collection group or specific collection and use the search box on that page.
Example from the Collection List page:
Here are some search hints:
The word(s) you enter in the search box will be searched against the title, author, subjects, description, series, and identifier fields of each item's record.
The word(s) you entered will also be searched against the full text of all archived documents. For more information on full text searching please contact the Digital Archive Administrator.
The search engine ignores certain words that occur frequently in English, but do not add value to the search. These are:
"a", "and" , "are" , "as" , "at" , "be" , "but" , "by" , "for" , "if" , "in" , "into",
"is" ,"it" ,"no" , "not" , "of" , "on" , "or" , "such", "the" , "to" , "was"
Use an asterisk (*) after a word stem to get all hits having words starting with that root, for example:
will retrieve selects, selector, selectman, selecting.
The search engine automatically expands words with common endings to include plurals, past tenses ...etc.
To search using multiple words as a phrase, put quotation marks (") around the phrase.
Put a plus (+) sign before a word if it MUST appear in the search result. For instance, in the following search the word "training" is optional, but the word "dog" must be in the result.
Put a minus (-) sign before a word if it should not appear in the search results. Alternatively, you can use NOT. This can limit your search to eliminate unwanted hits. For instance, in the search
or
you will get items containing the word "training", except those that also contain the word "cat".
The following Boolean operators can be used to combine terms. Note that they must be CAPITALIZED !
AND - to limit searches to find items containing all words or phrases combined with this operator, e.g.
will retrieve all items that contain BOTH the words "cats" and
"dogs".
OR - to enlarge searches to find items containing any of the words or phrases surrounding this operator
will retrieve all items that contain EITHER the words "cats" or
"dogs".
NOT - to exclude items containing the word following this operator, e.g.
will
retrieve all items that contain the word "training" EXCEPT those
also containing the word "cat".
Parentheses can be used in the search query to group search terms into sets, and operators can then be applied to the whole set, e.g.
Search results can be refined by Date, Subject and Format Type. Select a term(s) from the Narrow search results box in the lower left section of the search results page. The search will return only the items that match the category selected exactly. The terms used to limit results are called filters. When selected they are displayed at the top of the search results page.
Example of a search result page:
The Subject and Format Type sections use controlled vocabulary. A controlled vocabulary is a set of terms which form a dictionary of descriptions of particular types of content or subject matter. These are maintained by standards bodies in order to standardize the way that similar materials are categorized in archives. This aids searching by increasing the likelihood that the relevant materials will be returned by the search engine.
The Subject controlled vocabulary is a locally maintained vocabulary specific to The American Legion ecosystem. Format Type is the second controlled vocubulary used throughout the system. This vocabulary is derived from Nomenclature 3.0 for Museum Cataloging by Paul Bourcier, Ruby Rogers and the Nomenclature Committee and applied with local best practices.
Relevant Collection Groups
Important Fields
Build a Resolution Search
Search by resolution number
With each meeting resolution numbers are issued beginning with number 1. This results in multiple resolutions with the same number. For a precise search, use the phrase "resolution no. " including the resolution number with quotes around the statement. This will return all resolution no. 1. Add the year, topic of the resolution or part of the resolution title to narrow the search.
Examples:
Search by unique identifier
Each approved resolution is assigned a unique identifier for easy identification and retrieval. The identifier includes the year, meeting abbreviation and three digit resolution number (i.e. 035, 001, 121). For example, a search for 2007F035 will retrieve resolution number 35 from the 2007 Fall National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting.
Search Example | Results |
2003N115 | This search returns only resolution number 115 from the 2003 National Convention. |
2003N* | This search returns all the active resolution from the 2003 National Convention. |
2008S002 | This search returns only resolution number 2 from the 2008 Spring National Executive Committee meeting. |
Meeting Abbreviations
The Digital Archive content is organized around groups of collections which correspond to administrative entities, and types of publications. Within each group there are several collections. Each individual collection contains items. This organization gives the system flexibility.
Each group of collections has its own entry page displaying information, news and links reflecting that group, as well as a descriptive list of individual collections.
Individual collections can be organized around a topic, or by type of information (such as resolutions or newsletters) or by any other sorting method useful in organizing the digital items.
Each collection has its own entry page displaying information, news and links reflecting the interests of users of that collection.
Register an account to subscribe to collections for email updates. To create an account, you will need to click on "Login" and follow the instructions. After that, you will need to enter your e-mail address and password in the log-in form that appears. Your e-mail address should include your username and domain name. It is not case sensitive.
Example: usmith@legion.org
Type your password exactly as you entered it originally. It is case sensitive. Be sure to click on the "log in" button to continue.
Once logged in, select your name in the top right corner, then select profile. Scroll down to the subscriptions section. Select the collections you would like updates on.
For help with using the Digital Archive and questions about the site, please contact your Digital Archive Administrator.