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Military mementos: LSU professor creates project to help troops, veterans preserve items

The Advocate - 2/23/2023

Feb. 22—While in his attic going through the belongings of his father, a retired Air Force veteran who died in 2011, Edward Benoit III thought of his own time in the Air Force and realized he didn't keep much of his military memorabilia.

"I don't actually have that much left over because I didn't save much," he said.

Benoit, an associate professor at the LSU School of Library & Information Science, noticed that many veterans keep their mementos in attics, garages, under beds and digitally on cell phones or laptops.

Using his background working with archives at LSU, Benoit felt compelled to create a central location where veterans could keep their items preserved.

"Working with archives, it really just made me think more about providing some sort of training and resources to help contemporary veterans and active duty military," he said.

Collecting hundreds of surveys and stories from active-duty military and veterans over the past five years, Benoit created the Virtual Footlocker Project, an online portal designed to provide military members with the tools to organize, store and preserve their personal collections.

With help from a $391,000 early-career grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Benoit organized dozens of focus groups to find out what types of memorabilia military veterans have on hand and what they need or care about.

Benoit involved every branch of the military during the focus groups and pointed out how often veterans wished they had a virtual footlocker when they were serving.

He also said it became apparent how often items are misplaced or lost when the military moves its members around.

"It's what's called a permanent change of station, or PCS, which is military jargon for the military telling you to go somewhere else," he said. "Then the military packs up your stuff and things just go missing, but losing precious mementos that way causes pain because there were things that couldn't be replaced."

Benoit ended up developing two sets of curricula that are now freely available on the Virtual Footlocker Project website.

One for active-duty military and veterans and the other for training archivists and cultural heritage workers on how to work with service members and veterans.

Benoit said the goal is to create a portal that is top of mind for military members so they know how to preserve their items during their service.

"The closer we can get people to thinking about it when they're created, if they already have a plan then it's more likely that they won't misplace something or lose it or accidentally delete it and so that was the real thought process," he said.

According to project officials, about every sixth respondent who participated in the Virtual Footlocker Project focus groups lives in Louisiana.

Tara Garbutt, an Army veteran and New Orleans resident pursuing her second master's degree at LSU, is one of the project's participants.

Honorably discharged from the military in 2017, Garbutt volunteered for the Louisiana State Archives and the University of New Orleans working with sheet music and collecting runaway slave ads from 19th century newspapers.

She said she came to LSU because it is the only university in the state accredited for archiving, which is what she wanted to do.

"My goal is to prepare materials for future researchers, do cultural heritage-type archiving and gather knowledge for others to learn from," Garbutt said in a statement. "As a veteran and archivist, I see the value in LSU's Virtual Footlocker Project because I didn't really think of saving my military stuff, and now I carry my documents in a fireproof bag."

With help from his position at LSU, Benoit said, his plan was to connect the university and military community in a meaningful way.

"As a faculty member at LSU, with it being a land grant institution, I'm always trying to think of different ways that what I'm researching can be put into practical applications," he said. "I really do think that the connection between a state-funded institution should have something that gives back to the state and that's why I'm always trying to think of these more applied research projects."

Benoit said he hopes that in time more active-duty military and veterans will use the resources provided by the Virtual Footlocker Project and won't have to keep important mementos and other items tucked away in the attic.

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