LET’S GET DIGITAL!

Over the past five or six years, and with quite

a bit of effort, I wrote about three articles

that came out in the Czech Republic and beyond. I worked in construction, and travelled

a lot. There was less and less free time, and

so I relied on my extensive, personal library

and on my friends, both at home and abroad.

Naturally, my on-line references took advantage of the American digital archive Fold3.

com, to which I was a long-time subscriber.

It is an absolutely priceless source of information when it comes to American military

history, and not just American. I had accessed their archives two years ago, when over

the Christmas break, I was in the process of

completing an update to an article I wrote

for the French magazine ACES about Japanese ace Saburo Sakai. I was surprised to find

log entries accessible of Japanese combat

units on the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) site. The entries I went

through (I spent a few years studying the language) elevated the article by several levels,

and helped to break down some of the myths

surrounding this pilot.

But, that did not prepare me for what was

to come, when I began putting together two

articles for REVI magazine last January – the

first about the Western Front during the First

World War (Albatros D.III from Jasta 20 captured by the Dutch) and the second outlining

a similar scenario, but with a Soviet Curtiss

P-40 captured by the Finns in 1943. The

amount of material accessed, and the ease

with which it was done, took my breath away.

Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, German, Czech, Polish, Estonian, and especially Russian archives

contain an insane amount of information, the

contents of which can be searched with the

use of some key words. My former Russian

colleagues were somewhat derailed! There

is something in Russia digitalized? For free?

They didn’t want to believe it. In all honesty, archives in the EU are in this respect somewhat behind their Russian and American

counterparts.

INFO Eduard - DECEMBER 2020

The archives dating from the First World

War are a theme unto itself. Much of them,

that contain personal information, are only

accessible now, after a hundred years. The

amount of archived documentation from this

period, including photographs, continues to

expand.

Thanks to digitalization, it is not long ago that

the nurse that took care of Manfred Freiherr

von Richthofen after he was wounded in July

1917 could be identified. In the coming year,

you may look forward to articles from our

team of authors that will make much more

use of on-line databases, but will also continue to make use of the tried and true method

of researchers and authors, which is itself indispensable.

The world, at least the historical research

world, is much more digitalized than

I thought possible even a year ago. And this is

the idea that I wanted to express here. The

way that the pandemic has forced us to stop,

has enabled us to ponder over many themes

of life and of conducting business…for instance, how to make full use of the information

that is around us.

And by that, I don’t mean sitting in front of

a screen and inputting keywords to Google.

Even that requires a certain knowledge. I had

to make an effort with the archives…to find

them, register in the right databases, understand their structure and shortcomings, and

generally play around with them. Finding

quality data requires effort. But it also raises quality on the whole, and effectiveness.

It eliminates the uncertainties of ‘reinventing the wheel’ and fills in the blanks. I am

certain that this applies to all fields. Once

we emerge from our quarantines, let’s get

digital!

Jan Bobek

eduard

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