{"id":416,"date":"2013-01-01T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T04:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.military-history.us\/?p=416"},"modified":"2015-02-03T17:28:29","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T15:28:29","slug":"a-note-on-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/2013\/01\/a-note-on-sources\/","title":{"rendered":"Historical Resources on the Web"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated 24\u00a0June\u00a02014<\/span><\/strong><\/b>\u00a0— Below the fold is a list of historical sources on the internet, this includes both primary and secondary source collections. \u00a0 I am constantly updating this list when I run across useful sites. \u00a0 Please point me at sites I miss in the comments section. I thought it would be a good idea to put up a note about sources I use on the site and general historical source collections as I run across them or they are recommended to me. For the most part I will try to use online sources in my essays and blog posts for one main reason. There is tons of great information on the internet if you know where to look and how to search. I hope that by posting online sources it will point people to some of the many resources available online. \u00a0 Occasionally I will use books from my personal library to cite some items that I just cannot find an online source for. \u00a0Lastly, when I do academically cite something I will use standard scholarly notation according to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16<\/span>th<\/sup>\u00a0Edition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is the list of online historical \u00a0primary and secondary sources:<\/span><\/h4>\n

The Avalon Project<\/a>: a collection of historical legal documents from antiquity to the present.<\/p>\n

Google Books<\/a>: There are literally millions of books on this site, many of them available for full viewing.<\/p>\n

Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection<\/a>: \u00a0As much as I hate to hype anything from the University of Texas(because I am a University of Oklahoma fan) this page has many historical maps that come in extremely handy at times; especially when comparing historical to contemporary place names.<\/p>\n

Global Security.org<\/a>: This is not so much a historical source as a fairly decent source of contemporary military information. \u00a0 Take things on this site with a grain of salt. \u00a0 Their info is generally good but is sometimes dated. \u00a0(Update: \u00a0This site has now put up a pay wall to get to much of their content)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Federation of American Scientists<\/a>: \u00a0 This \u00a0is another good site for contemporary info. \u00a0 They also have a fairly extensive library of historical information about the development of WMD over the last century or so. \u00a0 Their sections on Nuclear and Chemical weapons are especially good. The US Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC)<\/p>\n

Combined Arms Research College Library<\/a>\u00a0is an excellent source for official US Army history publications, they also have an archive of Theses’ written by students that have attended the CGSC.<\/p>\n

The “Green Books” US Official Histories of WWII.<\/a>\u00a0These are the best official histories to come out of WWII. In general, these books are only available in libraries so it is awesome that they are now available digitally.<\/p>\n

US Army Center of Military History<\/a>\u00a0is another excellent source for official histories. \u00a0 The Center of Military Heraldry is also there and has links to the official lineages of just about every unit that has ever served in the US Army.<\/p>\n

Military History Online<\/a>: \u00a0 An excellent collection of articles on military history by a variety of authors; some professional historians and some amateurs. \u00a0 The general quality of the articles is high though. \u00a0\u00a0I have to say that because I have a few articles posted on there. \ud83d\ude42<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

De Re Militari:<\/a>\u00a0The Medieval Military History Society has an excellent selection translations of primary source material on the society webpage.<\/p>\n

Military History Encyclopedia on the Web:<\/a>\u00a0A very good collection of Military related articles.<\/p>\n

World History Database List of Wars:<\/a>\u00a0This site has a list of most of the wars fought in the western world and many outside it that link to timelines of the particular wars although there is not a whole lot of details. \u00a0 It is a good place to get a general idea of the issues and combatants in various wars.<\/p>\n

ORB: The Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies<\/a>: \u00a0 This is an excellent source for short pieces on virtually every aspect of medieval history.<\/p>\n

Papal Encyclicals Online<\/a>: \u00a0 This is a Catholic layperson run website that has English translation of most Papal Bulls going back to 1216 on it. \u00a0 A pretty good source for anyone doing Crusade research or researching the church’s role in history.<\/p>\n

Livius.org<\/a>: \u00a0 This site has an extensive encyclopedia of articles on the Ancient world from Ancient Mesopotamian Kingdoms to the Roman Empire. \u00a0 An excellent resource to get a quick overview of selected topics.<\/p>\n

The Website of Dr. Kurt Hackemer at the University of South Dakota<\/a>: \u00a0 Dr Hackemer has a fairly large list of resources and further links on his website. \u00a0 Of note is a list of links to digitized newspapers mainly from the 19th Century. \u00a0 He also has a list of military primary documents available in PDF, again these are mainly from the 19th Century.<\/p>\n

Eyewitness to History<\/a>: \u00a0 This site is full of eyewitness accounts of happenings in history from the ancient world to today. \u00a0 I had a book by this title in Junior High and this website far exceeds anything in the book. \u00a0 It is possible to spend hours browsing this site, especially for the history geek.<\/p>\n

The U.K. National Archives<\/a>: \u00a0 The National Archives has a pretty extensive list of digitized archival material available online although if you want to do any serious research you must go to the archives themselves. \u00a0 They mainly have the most important and famous documents digitized.<\/p>\n

Greek and Roman Authors on LacusCurtius<\/a>: This is an excellent site I stumbled across that has the complete texts of many Greek and Roman authors, many in the original Latin and Greek along with English translations.<\/p>\n

The Library of Congress<\/a>: \u00a0 I can’t believe I have not included this resource before. \u00a0 The Library of Congress has tons of material from photographs to documents. \u00a0 It is one of the best American History resources on the web. \u00a0 They have a huge collection of Civil War photographs and a very large document collection. \u00a0 They are constantly adding material as it gets digitized. \u00a0 It is a very good place to find primary documents for American history.<\/p>\n

Great War Primary Document Archive<\/a>: This is an amazing site with literally thousands of photos and Primary Documents from World War I digitized on the site. It is a must bookmark for anyone interested in the history of the Great War<\/p>\n

Gutenberg Project<\/a>: This site has a vast collection of older books available as e-book downloads. \u00a0 Many are available as PDFs and Word or text files and many are not searchable but often the quality of the downloads and scans is quite good.<\/p>\n

EBOOKEE<\/a>: \u00a0 This site is a huge depository of e-books available for free download. \u00a0 This is a great place to look for recent scholarly works that you know the title of. \u00a0 This is a good companion to Gutenberg.<\/p>\n

Virginia Memory<\/a>: This is a very interesting site that has a searchable database of Civil War primary documents that have been digitized. It mainly consists of diaries and letters of participants and is searchable by keyword, battle, and region.<\/p>\n

Military History Resources<\/a>: This site has a huge collection of links to military history resources covering just about every historical period.<\/p>\n

20 Sep 2011\u00a0–\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>The Art of Battle: Animated Battle Maps<\/a>: \u00a0 Very nice collection of battle maps that are animated to show the course of a battle. \u00a0 The battles covered range from Antiquity to World War II. \u00a0 Very interesting site that is growing all the time.<\/p>\n

20 Sep 2011\u00a0–<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Chinese Military Power: A Compendium of Online Resources about Chinese Military Policy & Capabilities<\/a>: A useful one-stop resource for all thins related to the Chinese Military. This site links to many articles related to the Chinese military. The only drawback to it, is that looks like it stop getting substantial updates in 2008 and much has happened in the past three years. Still a useful site though.<\/p>\n

26 Oct 2011\u00a0–<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0The Nuclear Weapons Archive<\/a>: \u00a0 I cannot believe I forgot about this site when initially putting this list together. \u00a0 This site has probably the most comprehensive list of materials relating to nuclear weapons I have yet seen. \u00a0 They have all declared nuclear countries on her as well as sections on countries suspected of having them. \u00a0 An excellent resource for just about anything having to do with the history and proliferation of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

27 Oct 2011-<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society<\/a>: The British Royal society has just made their entire archive of their journal the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society available online. It is the oldest scientific journal in the world, its first edition appeared in 1665. It includes things like Isaac Newton’s first article, Ben Franklin’s article about the experiment with the kite and many more. I have only briefly browsed it but there is some really cool stuff in there and it is an invaluable research for historians and the general public.<\/p>\n

31 Oct 2011\u00a0–\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>Documentary Guide<\/a>: A fellow poster at\u00a0WCF\u00a0<\/a>pointed me to this site. \u00a0 It is not strictly a history site but if you type history into the search box it pops up with a lot of history documentaries viewable online. \u00a0 Some are kind of off the wall late-nite history channel type videos but many are good solid films. \u00a0 Worth checking out if you have the time.<\/p>\n

11 Nov 2011\u00a0–<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Air Aces<\/a>: A fellow poster at\u00a0WCF\u00a0<\/a>pointed me to this site also. It is an exhaustively researched list of just about every air-to-air combat that has taken place since military aviation began. If you are a fighter enthusiast this site should be on your list of bookmarks. If you are a historian, this is an invaluable resource on air combat. An excellent website with an extensive list of links of its own to other air combat sites. Some of the links on this site are broken but many are not.<\/p>\n

27 Nov 2011\u00a0–\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>GET IN GET OUT AND GET AWAY:<\/a>\u00a0Interesting site about National Service in Britain prior to its abolishment in the early sixties.<\/p>\n

19 Jan 2012\u00a0–\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>Nazi and East German Propaganda Guide Page:<\/a>\u00a0A very cool page that has literally thousands of examples of both Nazi and DDR propaganda. Well worth looking at if you are interested in knowing what kind of stuff dictatorships use to fool their citizens into following them.<\/p>\n

26 Jan 2012\u00a0–\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>British History Online<\/a>: This site has a large collection of primary and secondary documents from British History. \u00a0 One of the ones I found the most interesting was the\u00a0Assize of Nuisance from 1301-1427<\/a>\u00a0detailing complaints from people in London that were investigated by the city Aldermen. \u00a0 Excellent site to waste an afternoon digging through or conduct serious research.<\/p>\n

13 February 2012\u00a0–<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0British Imperial History Library<\/a>: A pretty large collection of resources relating to British Imperial history. \u00a0 They also have a pretty good selection of free books available for download as PDFs.<\/p>\n

18 February 2012\u00a0–\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>Criminal proceedings of the Old Bailey<\/a>: The records of court cases at the London Central Criminal Court from 1674-1913. Very interesting place to research the different ways in which criminal cases have been handled in London over the years.<\/p>\n

8 March 2012\u00a0–<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Jensen’s Web Sources for Military History<\/a>: This is a huge list of links to military history resources from antiquity to the modern day. Many free journals are listed in the generalist section, which is what makes this site so valuable in my eyes. A word of warning though, as with any link collection\u00a0(including mine here)<\/i>\u00a0some are broken.<\/p>\n

16 April 2012 \u00a0–<\/span> <\/strong>Historical US Newspaper Archives<\/a> \u00a0and\u00a0Library Of Congress Digitized Newspapers<\/a>: The first site is an aggregator which lists all fifty states and a summary of the archives of newspapers from that state that are \u00a0available \u00a0online and links to those papers, many are links to the LOC site. \u00a0\u00a0The LOC site has \u00a0digital \u00a0copies of newspaper from all over the country with the earliest being from 1837 to the present. \u00a0\u00a0Both very interesting, it is cool to read papers from significant historical events in the US and see what contemporaries of the time thought. \u00a0\u00a0I can get lost for hours in both sites.<\/p>\n

17 April 2012 \u00a0–<\/span> <\/strong>Institute for the Study of Warfare<\/a>: This is an interesting site with plenty of \u00a0useful \u00a0information about current US \u00a0military \u00a0operations and analysis of \u00a0geopolitics \u00a0around the globe. \u00a0\u00a0Well worth looking at.<\/p>\n

18 May 2012 \u00a0–<\/span><\/strong> \u00a0Open Library<\/a>: While not strictly a historical resource this is an awesome site for people like me that love to read. \u00a0\u00a0They have over 1 million e-books available for free \u00a0\u00a0lending download. \u00a0\u00a0I cannot say enough good things about a site that encourages people to expand their \u00a0horizons \u00a0through reading.<\/p>\n

4 June 2012\u00a0–<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Digital Book Index<\/a>: A very good site with thousands of digital books indexed by subject. \u00a0 The History section alone is broken down into over 100 subcategories.<\/p>\n

18 July 2012\u00a0– <\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Manybooks.net<\/a>: \u00a0 This is another free eBook site. \u00a0 They have a section on war books that has close to 1,400 titles in it. \u00a0 Many are older books in which the copyright has expired but they are good nonetheless. \u00a0 What I especially like about their war book section is it full of personal memoirs from WWI and the American Civil War. \u00a0 In other words, the types of books you don’t find on bookstore shelves that provide a different view of war from standard historical works.<\/p>\n

11 November 2012\u00a0–\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>The Castles of Wales<\/a>: \u00a0\u00a0This interesting site contains data on over 500 castles located in Wales. \u00a0\u00a0Many of the pages also contain photos of castles or the sites where castles were formerly located.<\/p>\n

11 November 2012\u00a0–<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Roads to Ruins<\/a>: \u00a0\u00a0This interesting website contains information about a fairly large selection of castles throughout Germany. \u00a0\u00a0There are about 100 castles listed but there are plenty more castles in \u00a0Germany \u00a0than those listed on this site. \u00a0\u00a0I am personally aware of the location\/ruins of at least 6 castles within 10 miles of where I live in Northern Bavaria.<\/p>\n

11 November 2012 \u00a0–\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Japanese Castles<\/a>: This interesting page has information about a limited selection of Japanese castles. \u00a0\u00a0These castles are \u00a0interesting \u00a0because the Japanese castle building \u00a0tradition \u00a0grew separate from the European tradition yet both cultures developed very similar solutions to similar problem when designing and building fortifications. I will say that I find Japanese castles to be very aesthetically pleasing.<\/p>\n

6 December 2012\u00a0–<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Urban Ghosts-Military Section<\/a>: \u00a0While \u00a0not strictly a \u00a0historical \u00a0resource this section of the Urban Ghosts website has plenty of \u00a0features \u00a0about abandoned bits and \u00a0pieces \u00a0of objects from military history. \u00a0\u00a0It is interesting to say the least and a great site to waste some time at if you have nothing better to do.<\/p>\n

2 January 2013<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0–\u00a0Imperial War Museum<\/a>: The Imperial War Museum is the official repository of \u00a0British \u00a0military imagery and they have an extensive and impressive collection \u00a0of images \u00a0that have been digitized and made available online. \u00a0\u00a0There is a search \u00a0function \u00a0as well as a listing of the collection by subject. \u00a0\u00a0An excellent research tool.<\/p>\n

1 March 2013<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0–\u00a0Sites of Memory<\/a>: \u00a0\u00a0This site has a pretty extensive list of war memorial from all over the world. \u00a0\u00a0It is s good place to see how different peoples and cultures \u00a0remember \u00a0their fallen. \u00a0\u00a0I will admit that i know the site owner and have contributed. \u00a0\u00a0that just makes the site better in my opinion.<\/p>\n

29 April 2013<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0–\u00a0Lone \u00a0Sentry \u00a0Blog<\/a>: \u00a0\u00a0I ran across this site while doing some recent on WWII. It has a large collection documents and images relating to WWII. \u00a0\u00a0It is indexed fairly well and heck, it is just interesting to browse what has been put up and see what \u00a0gems \u00a0you will run across.<\/p>\n

10 June 20<\/strong>1<\/strong>3<\/strong><\/span> – McMaster University WWI Trench Map Database<\/a>: \u00a0This database has a large number of aerial photos and trench maps of the British sector in Flanders and Northern France from WWI that have been digitized. \u00a0A good place to go to get a very goo idea of how intricate the trench networks of WWI really got.<\/p>\n

29 July 2013<\/span><\/strong> – Open Education Databae (OEDb)<\/a>: \u00a0This site has thousands of college level courses across the academic spectrum\u00a0available for free. \u00a0They are taught by professors from major universities. \u00a0A search for history alone turns up over 400 classes. \u00a0Well worth checking out for both the novice and the serious history geek. \u00a0Hat Tip to Mr. Xavier Gray for pointing me in the direction of this resource.<\/em><\/p>\n

16 October 2013<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0–Richard Jensens’s\u00a0Web Sources for Military History<\/a> : \u00a0A pretty extensive collection of military history sites from around the web. \u00a0The site has not been updated since 2012 so expect some dead links but there is plenty of infor on here and the links are broken down by category. \u00a0A good place to start looking.<\/p>\n

11 November 2013 –<\/span><\/strong> Fold3<\/a>: \u00a0A very interesting site that contains thousands of digitized records of United States veterans from the Revolution to the War in Afghanistan. \u00a0A good place to start looking if you want information on a specific veteran or just want to browse.<\/p>\n

2 January 2014 –\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Holy Land Photos<\/a>: \u00a0This very interesting site has photos of locations from throughout Israel and jerusalem of sites both religious and historical. \u00a0Each section includes an update of the status of archaeological research of the site in question. \u00a0The different types of locations range from the possible locations of Christ’s Tomb to water cisterns for Jerusalem built by the Romans.<\/p>\n

16 January 2014 –<\/strong><\/span> British Army War Diaries-1914-1918<\/a>: \u00a0The UK National archives is in the process of digitizing hundreds of thousands of pages of British Army WWI unit war diaries as part of their effort to commemorate the 100th anniversary of WWI. \u00a0The collection is not complete as of this update but it is pretty large and they add more stuff to it all the time. \u00a0This is an invaluable source for researching particular battles from WWI in which British units participated.<\/p>\n

30 January 2014 –<\/strong><\/span> Oral History AudioBooks<\/a>: \u00a0This site was recommended to me by the site owner. \u00a0After checking it out it is well worth inclusion here. \u00a0What it is is a collection of anecdotes and transcripts of interviews with WWII members of the 712th Tank Battalion as they relate their wartime experiences. \u00a0This \u00a0is kind of a mini-VFW hall. \u00a0A place to go get some of the war stories old vets toss around when they get together and that most people never get to hear. \u00a0The best war stories don’t involve killing and being killed, they are about the little things that make life in combat tolerable.<\/p>\n

12 June\u00a02014 –<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Institute for the Study of War<\/a>: \u00a0While not strictly historical this site’s breadth and depth of information on war and especially current conflicts is unparallelled. \u00a0It has insightful analysis of ongoing wars and the tea leave readers here are pretty accurate in predicting the course of current wars around the globe. \u00a0Very interesting and insightful.<\/p>\n

24 June\u00a02014 –<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0World War I Hub from OUP<\/a>: \u00a0This is essentially a marketing site put up by Oxford University Press. \u00a0For being a marketing site though, it has an outstanding selection of material available about the outbreak, course, and conclusion of World War I on their for free. \u00a0OUP publishes some of the best historical works around and they draw on that collection of published work as well as some specially commissioned pieces to put this site together. \u00a0Well worth a visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Updated 24\u00a0June\u00a02014\u00a0— Below the fold is a list of historical sources on the internet, this includes both primary and secondary source collections. \u00a0 I am constantly updating this list when I run across useful sites. \u00a0 Please point me at… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1219,29,121],"tags":[48,405,1007,404,386,403,1012,407,406,384,23,385,33],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dispatches-administration","category-historiography","category-scholarship-2","tag-academics","tag-documents","tag-historiography","tag-history","tag-libraries","tag-military-history","tag-political-history","tag-primary-documents","tag-prmary-research","tag-references","tag-research","tag-resources","tag-scholarship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}