Tips to locate your post in the Legion archives

Since its release in January 2012, The American Legion Digital Archive – a research tool allowing access to a host of Legion materials and publications from National Headquarters – has been adding full-text access to everything from resolutions to brochures, congressional testimony to speeches, and all the different historical versions of the national magazine, stretching back to the organization’s founding in 1919. And it was recently optimized for use on smartphones and tablets.

Those looking for their post’s history for their Centennial Celebration page, or other historical endeavors, can use the archive to possibly find past mentions of their post by National Headquarters. Follow these search tips:

• Visit the online Digital Archive’s web page. The search field on the upper left-hand side of the home page will go through all the different digital collections.

• Conduct several different searches. Start with your post number in quotes – for example, “Post 23.” This will bring up all the results that have the complete phrase “Post 23” in them. Encasing the phrase in quotation marks is vital, and the difference between getting 136 and 1,719 results.

• Insert the name of your post, the town it’s located in, a namesake, etc., alongside Post 23. For example, Muddsville “Post 23” and “Muddsville Post 23.” This will catch both mentions that put the name with the posts and ones that don’t.

• Try other phrases once you’ve learned how to decipher results. Does your post have a signature event that may have attracted National’s attention at some point? Or a past national commander or celebrity who was a member of your post?

Remember that quotation marks are vital to narrow the field of results.

Try these tips, and you might be surprised to find out where your post has turned up.