dec04b.indd INTERNET RESOURCES U.S. military and defense studies Online resources by Edward Metz Search the Web for any sites related to a military topic and you are likely to fi nd a formidable array of choices stretching out before you. It’s not always easy to immedi­ ately separate the truly authoritative content from that offered up by enthusiasts of one kind or another. To cope with the astound­ ing proliferation of such Web sites, librarians at various military institutions and elsewhere have been working to promote gateways to quality links and to improve access to pri­ mary and secondary source material beyond the walls of their respective institutions. In addition to featuring a handful of mili­ tary gateway pages, this column highlights online sources and public databases provid­ ing full­text access to theses, monographs, articles, and research studies on military history or defense­related topics. Students and researchers will also be interested in exploring the ever­growing military digital library collections that, in addition to afford­ ing access to primary source documents, offer views of rare or important photographs and artifacts from our nation’s military past. For the sake of brevity, this column has remained centered on .mil or .gov domain re­ sources, though other libraries and institutions offer remarkable online resources, as well. Gateway pages • Air War College. Air War College maintains several subject directories to mili­ tary information on its Gateway to Internet Resources. Included here in the category of Military History are links to such areas as Military Casualties, Military Operations from the Civil War to the War on Terrorism, links to various veteran Oral History projects, and history resources broken down by branch of service: Army, Navy, Air Force, and Ma­ rines. Access: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc /awcgate/awc­hist.htm. • Combined Ar ms Research Librar y. This library maintains more than 1,500 links to authoritative Web sites on a wide variety of military and defense­related topics, includ­ ing its U.S. Military History Gateway page organized by period. Access: http://cgsc. leavenworth.army.mil/carl/gateway. • Dudley Knox Librar y of the Naval Post-Graduate School. This library main­ tains, among many other useful directories, a “Where to Find Military Information” About the author Edward Metz is acquisitions librarian at the Combined Arms Research Library in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, e-mail: edward. metz@us.army.mil © 2004 Edward Metz 648 / C&RL News December 2004 mailto:metz@us.army.mil http://cgsc http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc resources page organized by subject. The topical category of history includes links to Conflicts and Casualties, Lineages and Honors, Past Operations, and Exercises. Access: http://library.nps.navy.mil/home /militaryinfo.htm. Their publications range from the Offi cial Record of the Civil War to the benchmark “Green Series” of World War II, from Korea and Vietnam Army histories to Operation Desert Storm. CMH’s Online Bookshelves contains an extraordinary array of research and archival materials from the • The U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School. This metasite on the topic of military medical history features full­ text books, articles, documents, and images as well as other related links on this highly diverse and rich topic. Access: http://www. cs.amedd.army.mil/history/. Secondary source materials at military history institutes and think tanks • Air Force Historical Research Agen- cy. This agency maintains an online collection of historical reports, documents, and photos arranged by period and topic. The site offers links to other helpful Air Force­related sites. Access: http://www.au.af.mil/au/afhra. Colonial Era to the present as well as full­text access to CMH Studies, Official Histories, and a rich variety of other resources, such as selections from its Oral History collections and World War II Commemorative Brochures. Access: http:// www.army.mil/cmh/. • Combat Studies Institute (CSI). CSI is one of the academic departments of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and is responsible for studying, instructing, and publishing on the development of the theory of war and nature of battle. CSI’s monograph­length Leavenworth Papers offers detailed original research and analysis on a variety of topics from World War II and the Cold War to the present. CSI Research Surveys, Bibliographies, and Special Studies provide valuable factual narrative and overviews on campaigns from all eras, the evolution of military thinking and doctrine, and develop­ ments in various arms and • Center for Contemporar y Conf lict (CCC). CCC is a research institute at the Naval Post­graduate School (NPS) and is charged with providing analysis on emerging threats to U.S. national security. Access is available to the CCC’s monthly electronic journal “Strategic Insights” as well as to selected NPS student research papers and theses. Access: http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/publications/. • Center of Militar y Histor y (CMH). The U.S. Army’s Center of Military History is one of the largest pub­ lishers of military history in the world. CMH serves as the Army’s principal instrument for record­ ing the offi cial histories of U.S. Army operations. branches of service. Nearly all of the CSI publications since 1979 are available in HTML or PDF from its publications Web page. Access: http://cgsc.leavenworth.army. mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp. • The Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth. Originally estab­ lished as the Soviet Army Studies Office in 1986, today FMSO examines the doctrine, strategy, and tactics of selected armed forces from around the world. Its publications are designed to advise Army leadership on regional security matters and to keep abreast of lessons to be learned from military developments abroad. FMSO publications are organized by regional or topical categories, such as International Peacekeeping, Special Warfare, or Conflict in Chechnya. Access: http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/fmsopubs /fmsopubs.htm. C&RL News December 2004 / 649 http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/fmsopubs http://cgsc.leavenworth.army http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/publications www.army.mil/cmh http://www.au.af.mil/au/afhra http://www http://library.nps.navy.mil/home • I n s t i t u t e f o r N a t i o n a l S t r a t e g i c Studies (INSS). INSS does defense policy research for the Department of Defense and other U.S. government agencies. It also supports the National Defense University (NDU) in its role of educating military and government leaders on matters pertaining to defense and national security. INSS has an extensive publishing program in the areas of military history, national security studies, and regional studies among a host of others. Books, articles, essays, and papers published through INSS/NDU can be viewed in full text in HTML or PDF. Access: http://www.ndu. edu/inss/press/nduphp.html. • Naval Historical Center (NHC). NHC maintains essentially a gateway page to U.S. Naval History on the Web. The NHC site itself features several overviews of Naval History, as well some primary source docu­ ments and images from various periods in U.S. Naval History. It also provides external links to a wide variety of interesting Naval History resources. Access: http://www.his­ tory.navy.mil/. • The Strategic Studies Institute (SSI). SSI, the Army’s think tank for the analysis of national security policy and military strat­ egy, produces research studies that can be browsed either chrono­ logically or by topic. SSI Studies are available which allows you to search and browse the citations of articles published in more than 80 military and aeronautical journals indexed by AUL. This is a continuation of the print index prepared by AUL since 1949. The online ver­ sion has coverage of these principal military magazines going back to about 1988. Articles published in Military Review, Naval War College Review, Parameters, Marine Corps Gazette and the Journal of Air and Space Power, among others, can be viewed in full text by following the link to the publication’s Web site. Searching in AULIMP is limited to title, author, periodical, date, journal, and subject indexes. Access: http://www.dtic. mil/search97doc/aulimp/main.htm. • A i r U n i v e r s i t y ’ s R e s e a r c h Web . This site affords access to more than 2,500 Research Studies prepared by students and scholars attending the Air Force’s graduate schools. Enter keywords/phrases in the sim­ ple search field. Additionally the Air Univer­ sity Library hosts a superb collection of nearly 300 bibliographies on military and defense topics organized alphabetically, including one on military history. Each bibliography, at http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/bib97. htm contains sections on books, government documents, articles, and Internet resources. in full text in PDF. Topic categories include Regional Studies, Terrorism, National Security and Military Strategy, Defense Transforma­ tion, and Strategic Futures and Emerging Concepts. Access: http://www.carlisle.army. mil/ssi/pubs/. Specialized military public access databases Search these sites for theses, monographs, research papers, and articles. • Air University Library’s Index to Mil- itary Periodicals (AULIMP). AULIMP is the Defence Technical Information Center’s ver­ sion of Air University Library’s citation index, Military campaigns, battles, leaders, and theory comprise a large portion of the current and archival bibliographies. Bibliographies on hot current topics include Afghanistan and Peacekeeping. Be sure to check out a very useful bibliography featuring military history resources at http://www. maxwell.af.mil/au/aul /wsites/milhistory.htm. Access: https://research. au.af.mil/. • Center for Ar my Lessons Lear ned (CALL). CALL has the mission of capturing and recording Army lessons learned from past exercises, deployments, and combat operations and disseminating these to mili­ tary commanders, their staffs, and soldiers. 650 / C&RL News December 2004 http:au.af.mil https://research http://www http://www.carlisle.army http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/bib97 http://www.dtic http:tory.navy.mil http://www.his http://www.ndu As part of the Web site, CALL maintains a public access database, which provides the full text to archived issues of Military Review magazine going back to 1920, to digitized materials from the Military History Institute, and to student papers and monographs from the Command and General Staff College as far back as 1964. Of special interest on the CALL Web site is the newly published history of the United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom entitled “On Point.” It can be read in its entirety online at onpoint.leavenworth. army.mil. Access: http://call.army.mil/. • DTIC Fulltext Online Collection. The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) collects and disseminates scientific and technical information produced by all agen­ cies within the Department of Defense. Its Fulltext Collec­ theses produced by the graduates of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) are available here, and extensive retrospective digitization of past CGSC publi­ cations is ongoing. Its collection of World War II operational documents, featuring original operational plans and orders from the Pa­ cific and European theaters, will continue to grow. Another collection is entitled “Stability Operations and Support Operations,” which focuses on today’s contemporary operating environment and the diverse nature of the missions the armed forces are called upon to participate in around the world. Simple and advanced search options as well as browsing are available. Access: http://cgsc.leavenworth. army.mil/carl/contentdm/home.htm. tion database, just one of its 15 hosted online databases, is especially significant for students of military history and national security. It provides full­ text access to monographs and papers written by senior military officers at the Army War College, Army Command and General Staff College, Naval War College, Air War College, Marine Corps University, Naval Post­Graduate School, and Joint Forces Staff College. These papers cover contemporary thinking on joint and combined operations, peacekeeping, homeland security, military transformation, and asymmetric warfare, while many more examine battles and campaigns from the past. Full­text coverage (PDF) for most papers extends back to 1993, and advanced search and sorting options are available. Access: http://stinet.dtic.mil/str/index.html. Primary source material/digital collections • Combined Arms Research Library. In the interest of preserving rare documents and materials for future generations and for assur­ ing a wider dissemination of Army knowledge beyond the walls of the library, the Combined Arms Research Library has established six digital collections. Recent monographs and • Donovan Research Librar y’s Digi- tized Monograph Collection. This collec­ tion (located in Ft. Benning, Georgia) con­ tains after­action reports, command diaries, and battle accounts from both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Desert Storm, and Somalia. Their online collection is currently modest but will continue to grow and may one day encompass more than 10,000 mono­ graphs. Access: http://www.infantry.army.mil /donovan/content/monograph.htm. • U.S. Army Military History Institute (MHI). MHI has the mission of preserving primary source materials documenting the Army’s past and ensuring their accessibility to future generations of students and scholars. You can browse MHI’s chronological list of historical periods to find your area of inter­ est. You’ll find there a veritable treasure trove of personal accounts, after­action reports, interviews, official bulletins, and rare publi­ cations from nearly every era of U.S. military history. MHI’s parent organization, the Army Heritage and Education Center, has recently launched its online Army Heritage Collection, featuring some of its many digitized images (continued on page 656) C&RL News December 2004 / 651 http:http://www.infantry.army.mil http://stinet.dtic.mil/str/index.html http://cgsc.leavenworth http:http://call.army.mil http:army.mil a different environment, will transfer to their organization and will make you the best quali­ fied candidate for the position. If you take the time to assess your skills, closely examine the qualifications of the position during your job search, and prepare to discuss how your skills closely match the needs of the organization, you will have the information you need for a successful interview. Conclusion Librarianship is an evolving profession and those working in it know that change is not only inevitable, but it is around every corner and quickly coming up from behind. Be­ cause we are in this constant state of change, moving from role to role or institution to in­ stitution is not as difficult as it is perceived to be. Similar skills are needed in all libraries no matter what your constituency is, or your role is, or what subject matter you deal with. If you remember that skill sets are transfer­ able and experience is relative, it is possible to “get there from here.” Note 1. A shorter version of this article appeared in the March 2004 issue of Info Career Trends, see www.lisjobs.com/newsletter/index.htm. Questions for the Library Career People can be sent to e­mail: librarycareerpeople@lisjobs. com.  (“Internet Resources,” cont. from page 651) of historical artifacts, photographs, and docu­ ments that tell the story of the Army’s past. Just select the Research Catalogs tab from the main page. Access: http://carlisle­www. army.mil/usamhi/. • U.S. Military Academy. The academy has begun an ambitious project of digitizing its rich resources, which cover the history of the academy and of its many illustrious alum­ ni. Included are multimedia recordings about Douglas MacArthur and the West Point Hon­ or Code, maps from the Revolutionary era, as well as books, photos, and manuscripts docu­ menting and preserving the history of West Point. Access: http://digital­library.usma.edu /collections/.  656 / C&RL News December 2004 http:http://digital-library.usma.edu http://carlisle-www www.lisjobs.com/newsletter/index.htm