Thanks to the kind help of Europa veteran Jim Broshot, I was able to add an article index for the original Europa Newsletter published by GDW in 1976-78 to the library. The references also have been added to the pages of DNO and Narvik, respectively. For you, that means another little glimpse at Europa history, for me, it means finally learning who exactly the first fifty buyers of Drang nach Osten really were.
Tag: library
In preparation to upcoming additions I’ve started moving pages and posts around: Mainly the pages on TEM and all other publications related to Europa are moving into the new library section of the Academy, whereas the Arsenal will be for information on the game exclusively. This was more of an effort than I thought – while those nifty widget-based editors are great for editing, copying content is practically impossible, so I basically had to move and swap pages and then repair permalinks and navigation menues. I also expect to severely loose some google rank because of moving content and other errors. However, screw google rank, its not like I will lose thousands of visitors a day – I dont have those. I am actually quite grateful the temptation to earn money with the site is never there, and so I will never start to think of articles in terms of SEO, maximizing reader engagement or chopping content into bits and pieces to create more page hits.
Anyway, expect some errors while browsing, and if you are missing information on how to play Europa on a Computer or where the ETO, LOC or TEMs are now, look in the library.
Oh, and I have two new link entries! And about 1000 (yes, you read that right!) pictures from a game report in my media library that need to be processed and published. But thats for another day.
The CARL digital library
A recurring theme of pages listed under these bookmarks seems to be that their design somehow harks back to the late nineties, but their content is much richer than a first look would surmise. CARL contines this trend: benhind an awkard and slow interface lingers a host of historical documents. CARL is short for “Combined Arms Research Library” and describes the library on Fort Leavenworth, which is in turn not only one of the oldest forts in the US still operational, but also counts the United States Army Combined Arms Center amongst its tenants. Fort Leavenworth prides itself to be the “intellectual center” of the US Army, and the sheer volume of documents available online certainly dwarf the Army’s Historical Center (history.army.mil).
Amongst the documents hosted are essays and thesises prepared by the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC), but also a lot of operational reports, old field manuals and all kinds of other documents related to the military history of the US. In these the second world war features prominently, as is to be expected. Especially the After Action Reports from the divisional and corps level make an interesting reading for EUROPA afficinados.
The cumbersome interface of the website has been mentioned already, although the collections are searchible, the structure is unintuitive and purly organisatorical, the website responds slow and makes it close to impossible to get an overview about the hosted documents. An overhaul has been announced for some time now, but even now the uniqueness and historical wealth of the documents found place CARL amongst the first websites relevant for modern military history.
Date: October 19th, 2012