October is American Archives Month! To celebrate, Stars and Stripes Archives and Library is sharing some “behind the scenes” images of Stripes’ operations, its staff and its archives throughout the paper’s eight decades of existence.

Heidelberg, Germany, June 19, 1948: Romance was in the air for many a service member serving in Europe in those immediate post-war years. Stars and Stripes staffers were not immune to Cupid’s arrow either and Stripes’ staff photographers were often called upon to do double duty as wedding photographers for their love-struck colleagues. Of the staff wedding photos so far digitized by Stars and Stripes’ archives staff, this one of Sheridan Louis Moyer, of Wheeling, W. Va., and his bride Mary Joan Liddle of Wallasey, Cheshire, England, sharing their first kiss as a married couple, is our favorite. Liddle was the former secretary to the managing editor of Stars and Stripes at the time, and Moyers served as chief mechanical adviser to the chief of ordnance, EUCOM. The identity of the two rather sour-looking witnesses is unknown.

Since 2004 the archives staff has worked to make more of our historic content available online. We have digitized our 1948-1999 European and Pacific editions, as well as several of our WWII editions and made them available online through http://starsandstripes.newspaperarchive.com/

In 2014 we focused our efforts on the preservation and digitization of our vast photo archives and have been slowly but steadily digitizing negatives, slides and prints — mainly concentrating on those with preservation issues.