The founders of Hmongstory Legacy are working with the Fresno State Library to preserve and make public its collection of stories, photos, documents and videos about the Hmong journey from Laos to the United States. 

Hmong men in a makeshift supply office in 1971.

The Galen Beery Collection is the first to debut in the Fresno State Hmong Digital Repository, available now on the library website. Beery was an American humanitarian aid worker for the International Voluntary Services, a precursor to the Peace Corps, and the United States Agency for International Development during the Secret War in Laos. The collection includes his biography, stories about people and locations during the war and photos of his experience and that of the Hmong people he met. 

With the help of the Fresno State Library, specialists in the Special Collections Research Center and Library Digital Services received the digital data from Hmongstory and built a webpage to host the content and make it available to all. The goal is to create a database where students, educators and anyone from around the world can access the information. Future collections from Hmongstory will follow with a plan for the library to host a larger database of southeast Asian history. 

Read the full story by BoNhia Lee here.