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For all inquiries, please contact: 

Carl Privette, Archivist 
(714) 532-7716
warletters@chapman.edu  

Guided tours of the Archives exhibit space are held Monday-Friday, 1pm-5pm. To make a reservation, please contact Archivist Carl Privette at us at warletters@chapman.edu or (714) 532-7716. 

Quite simply, any type of correspondence related to war or life in the military. We are interested in everything from letters about boot camp and basic training to descriptions of being under fire, and even correspondences written by veterans long after a conflict is over, reflecting on their wartime experience. Previous donors have sent us letters on a variety of topics, including: love, humor, faith, death, homesickness, grief, anger, courage, peace, humanity, resilience, camaraderie, reconciliation, patriotism, historical events, and many other related subjects. We are also interested in letters from the home front. The spouses, children, parents, siblings, and other loved ones of troops make enormous sacrifices, too, and their stories and voices should be preserved as well.

We no longer accept donations of only copies or transcripts, but are happy to accept them as part of a donation of original items (digital copies, not photocopies). Researchers prefer original documents because they can better authenticate the material, and they often discover additional information about a letter from its paper and other physical qualities.   

Yes. Even though we do emphasize the importance of handwritten or typed letters, we recognize that many service members and their loved ones correspond through email, and these are a valuable part of the historical record. If you have war-related emails to share, please donate them as paper print-outs.  

Our priority is the American wartime experience, most of the letters and emails in the Archives are written to or from American service members. However, we also accept extraordinary letters by foreign service members that relate to U.S. conflicts.

Yes. During some wars, service members had the opportunity to have themselves recorded for friends and loved ones on records or tapes or on video. We welcome these forms of communication. 

Letters and emails are what the Archives is most focused on preserving, but if a donor has correspondence to give us, we also welcome pictures, citations of service, awards, and any other material that will provide more information about the letter and the person who wrote it. We are interested in diaries and journals as well because some letter-writers might not have been able to express themselves freely in their correspondences, but they did so in their journals and diaries. We do not accept large items, such as uniforms or footlockers.

The Archives does not accept materials that exhibit the following conditions:

• If affected by moisture (e.g., mildewy smell or visible active or inactive microbial growth or other damage) 
• If affected by pests (e.g., past or current evidence of insects or rodents) 
• If possibly exposed to radiation or chemical weapons, such as Agent Orange

Other materials the Archives does not accept (but not limited):

• Nitrate negatives (flammable photographic film). Rule of thumb: If it's from before 1960 and doesn't say SAFETY on it, then assume it's nitrate. 
• Combustible materials, including matches, magnesium flints, Zippo lighters, cigarettes, etc. 
• Weapons or ammunition 
• Large objects or textiles (e.g., trunks, helmets, uniforms, flags, etc.) 
• Copy-only materials (physical and/or digital) 
  • EXCEPTION: We accept digital copies of letters/materials and transcriptions with the original materials. 

No.

Please be prepared to provide the following information to help the Archives determine whether your potentially donated materials fully meet the collection guidelines:

• Description of the items 
• Approximate size of the items, particularly any letters 
• Current physical condition of the items 
• How and where the items have been stored 

Additionally, any biographical information about the service member(s) associated with the letters would also be greatly appreciated. 

Please know the Archives reserves the right to respectfully decline all or part of any donation inquiry after internal review.  

No. If you decide to donate physical materials to our archive, then we kindly ask that you refrain from sending copies of the materials (hard copy or digital) to other institutions, as this may create complications with the intellectual property rights and usage permissions for the donation.

The Archives does not have the capacity to provide digitization services. We recommend that you, a trusted individual, or a company scan any letters and materials before donating them to us. 
Below are a few recommendations that can be used with a personal scanner and scanning software:

• Quality setting: 
  • High/Best 
• Resolution setting:  
  • 600dpi  
• Prompt the scanner or scanning software to scan more pages 
  • This will ensure that all pages of a given letter are in 1 file. 
  • Repeat this step for all letters 
• Save file formats 
  • PDF – letters and other documents 
• JPEG/JPG - photographs 

We do not accept letters or other materials from donors who do not hold the copyright to the majority of their items, as it limits their ability to be used by the Archives and its researchers.  

If the material was not created by you or inherited by you, we will only permit researchers to access the letters for private research only, with no permissions for Chapman University faculty, staff, and students to publish in an academic journal, book, or online in a digital exhibit/web page, or any other way for mass consumption. 

The Archives does not, under any circumstances, buy or sell letters. Also, we cannot appraise material for tax or any other financial purpose. All of the correspondences given to the Archives have been donated freely, and we are extremely grateful to the donors for their generosity. 

In donating your materials to the Archives, you transfer your physical rights and give Chapman University permission to use them and allow others to for educational purposes, but you retain your intellectual rights (i.e., copyright). For any questions about this, please contact Archivist Carl Privette at us at warletters@chapman.eduor (714) 532-7716.

People can help us by spreading the word about the Archives to those individuals searching for a location to keep their loved ones’ military service and wartime letters and related materials preserved. 
 
Additionally, we would greatly appreciate financial contributions to further support our efforts to preserve the letters and materials and make them more accessible to researchers. If you would like to make a financial contribution to the Archives, you may donate onlineor mail a check. Please contact Archivist Carl Privette for the mailing address at warletters@chapman.edu or (714) 532-7716.

To determine whether the Archives is permitted to provide non-downloadable reference scans of collection materials, please contact Archivist Carl Privette at warletters@chapman.eduor (714) 532-7716.