March 1, 2013

I continued with my research today for the Artillery and Heavy Weapons Patron Discovery Page I am creating. I have located many interesting resources in the main stacks at the library, including sources on Napoleon’s artillery, WWI & WWII artillery, German artillery, Civil War tactics, and Mortar tactics -- just to name a few. There are also a couple of Russian artillery resources written in Russian (I’m assuming) -- unfortunately the diagrams are all I can decipher. Long story short, the evolution of artillery from the civil war cannons of the 1860s to the precision smart-munitions used by today’s military is quite impressive. PML is really a goldmine of primary sources for military history and I enjoy wandering through the stacks. I’m used to searching for online resources in JSTOR and Pegasus -- maybe occasionally placing a book on reserve to pick up at the Cudahy Library circulation desk. Exploring the shelves is an entirely different experience, the sources seem more tangible when you can page through them.