Library of Congress Puts 484 9/11 Oral Histories Online
The Library of Congress has made 484 first-hand 9/11 oral-history interviews available online, giving the public and researchers remote access to testimony about the attacks and their long aftermath.
The Library announced the launch on September 3, 2026, as the United States marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. The Benjamin Luft Collection of 9/11 Oral Histories documents what participants witnessed, why they responded, rescue and cleanup work, illness and loss, family consequences, resilience and continuing remembrance.
What is now available
The collection contains 484 full-length video interviews conducted between April 2010 and September 2024. The Library says corresponding transcripts are available with the interviews. The broader archival record also includes photographs and manuscript materials, although the materials vary across the collection.
Users can search the online archive by names, hometowns and occupations. That makes it possible to find a particular participant or compare accounts from people who shared a profession, community or role in the World Trade Center response.
The online presentation also includes five main thematic compilations of excerpts covering the day of the attacks, rescue and recovery work, disease and loss, resilience, and family-member perspectives. The Library has added 42 more compilations drawn from the full-length interviews.
Who is represented
The collection is broader than an archive of emergency personnel alone. Participants include responders, family members, advocates and medical personnel. Examples identified by the Library include police officers, emergency medical workers, construction supervisors, volunteer firefighters and relatives of people killed on September 11.
The interviews address what people saw, why they took part in the response and how the experience affected their health, families and lives in the years that followed. Some accounts discuss illness and loss; others focus on advocacy, family effects, resilience and the effort to preserve memories as time passes.
How the project began
The project was begun by Benjamin Luft, a physician at Stony Brook Medicine who treated World Trade Center responders after the attacks. Stony Brook says the oral-history effort was founded in 2009 to preserve personal accounts of the disaster response and its consequences.
The project is now housed in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Its remote availability gives educators, relatives, historians and other researchers access to the material without traveling to Washington.
Why the release matters now
The online launch came during the remembrance cycle for the 25th anniversary of September 11. The anniversary provides the immediate context, but the practical change is broader: a large body of first-person testimony is now organized in a searchable federal collection that can be used beyond the commemorations.
The archive is a selected historical collection, not a complete account of every experience connected to 9/11. Its value is in preserving the voices of particular participants and showing how the disaster extended beyond the attacks themselves into rescue work, cleanup, health, family life and decades of remembrance.
Readers can access the collection through the Library of Congress collection page, where they can explore full-length interviews, transcripts and shorter thematic compilations.
Key sources
- Library of Congress newsroom announcement
- Library of Congress Benjamin Luft Collection
- Stony Brook Medicine Remembering 9/11
- Associated Press 25th-anniversary coverage
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