Researching FA and DoD Current and Historical Information - field artillery and Department of Defense information sources - Brief Article

FA Journal, July, 2001

1. FieldArtillery Magazines On Line. We are in the process of putting entire editions of the magazine on line for researchers to download in pdf format: sill-www.army.mil/famag. As of the publication of this magazine, we had magazines on line back to 1989; the goal this year is to have all magazines on line back to 1980 and, eventually, back to the magazine's inception in 1911. Another goal is to add an engine for on-line searches of the magazine by subject, author, title, year or feature (article, column, interview, etc.).

2. Researching FA Unit Histories. You can search for a unit history or its lineage on line via the US Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, Washington, DC: www.army.mil/cmh-pg.

3. Department of Defense (DoD) Research Sources. MERLN(Military Education and Research Library Network) is a database of 12 military libraries' catalogs on line: Air University Library, Combined Arms Research Library, Joint Forces Staff College Library, Marine Corps University Library, National Defense University Library, Naval PostGraduate School Library, US Air Force Academy Library, US Army War College Library and Military History Institute, US Coast Guard Academy Library, US Military Academy Library, and US Naval Academy Library. MERLN can be accessed via any of the 12 library web sites. MERLN's connection to the web site at the National Defense University: http://merln.ndu.edu.

MERLN offers the combined resources of the largest and most comprehensive collections of military information resources in the world by providing access to the holdings of the participating libraries. You can search MERLN by key word, author key word, subject heading key word or advanced searching (Boolean, ISBN, ISSN or Series).

4. Web Sources for Military History. Military history buffs can access http://members.aol.com/dann0l/military.html and find hundreds of links to military history web sites in America and around the world. The web site's originator is Dr. Richard Jensen, Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Chicago, who taught history for 30 years and was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the US Military Academy at West Point.

The site has 23 pages of on-line links organized by historical categories: Ancient, Medieval, l6th-l7th Centuries, 18th Century, American Revolution, Napoleonic Era, 19th Century, US Civil War, World War I, World War II, Cold War, Third World, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm to Kosovo and additional categories of Air Power/Aero-Space and Sea Power. Contributors include The History Channel, Yale University, the University of California and many other institutions and individual experts.

The web sources include bibliographies; official documents, letters, articles and books on line; maps; photos; drawings and paintings; poetry and literature; reenactments; historical societies and museums; and others sources.