NARA rolls made digital

[AvB]

Thanks for the analysis! Let’s hope we can have some presents under the christmas tree!

[nickterry]

Nine more reels within RG 238 went up this morning, picking off several bitty serials with 1-2 reels, including Jodl's diary, some indexes and the NM and NP document series. The indexes are for the NG and NOKW series, so the latter would be likely to be close to the front of the queue and due soon.

So the new catalog really can get updated several times a week.

ETA: and now the 12 reels of the Hans Frank diary/Diensttagebuch (T992)

[Palg]

Hi Guys,

I thought I could contribute by sharing my collection of rolls. They are mostly downloaded from http://wwiidigitalarchives.org/, John Calvin´s FTP Site and the rolls published by NARA. Most of the material covers 1943-45. The thing people might find useful is that I have converted all documents into PDF-files and named them (in German) to make navigating easier. Many have also been compressed to be more manageable.

Another thing some might find useful is that I have created links (.url-files) to the material found at https://wwii.germandocsinrussia.org/. Unfortunately the links cannot be opened directly from Google Drive but have to be downloaded first.

Here is the link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... nTtVA7aVlo

I hope this is of interest and am happy to take feedback on errors or rolls that should be added.

Regards,

Pål

[Mori]

Thanks. Usefful for those who prefer pdf rather than jpg.

I have always found pdf more cumbersome though, primarily because of the length of the rolls. Its longer to find relevant section browsing through a pdf file where no more than 4 pages are on display (sometimes less, it depends on your pdf reader) than cheking the small icons on the standard file manager. Even with a 15" laptop, it displays 50 icons, so navigating is way easier.

And naturally, extracting a 2 pages document from a pdf is pretty complicated vs. copy/pasting 2 jpg files.

[Palg]

Yes, there are some drawbacks with pdf, especially for the large files. It is a bit easier on a Mac though, in the built in Preview reader you can drag pages out from a pdf to create a new document. It also has a thumbnail feature to browse through a document quickly. Maybe there are some similar alternatives for PC?

[Mori]

Let's not get into a Mac vs. PC catfight

[nickterry]

Many thanks for this!

[nickterry]

I've included links to RG 238 and RG 242 as a whole in my index of open access sources. These have the most recent uploads displayed first (i.e. NARA ID highest) on the NARA catalog, so they should be the quickest way to check for new updates.
https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... s-and.html

[AvB]

Thanks. Usefful for those who prefer pdf rather than jpg.

I have always found pdf more cumbersome though, primarily because of the length of the rolls. Its longer to find relevant section browsing through a pdf file where no more than 4 pages are on display (sometimes less, it depends on your pdf reader) than cheking the small icons on the standard file manager. Even with a 15" laptop, it displays 50 icons, so navigating is way easier.

And naturally, extracting a 2 pages document from a pdf is pretty complicated vs. copy/pasting 2 jpg files.

Agree. And compressing to make more managable doesn't sound good to me. But everybody uses these sources in a different way. I use Adobe Bridge (which is free) to tag individual files and add them to collections. Really easy.

[Palg]

Thanks. Usefful for those who prefer pdf rather than jpg.

I have always found pdf more cumbersome though, primarily because of the length of the rolls. Its longer to find relevant section browsing through a pdf file where no more than 4 pages are on display (sometimes less, it depends on your pdf reader) than cheking the small icons on the standard file manager. Even with a 15" laptop, it displays 50 icons, so navigating is way easier.

And naturally, extracting a 2 pages document from a pdf is pretty complicated vs. copy/pasting 2 jpg files.

Agree. And compressing to make more managable doesn't sound good to me. But everybody uses these sources in a different way. I use Adobe Bridge (which is free) to tag individual files and add them to collections. Really easy.

I think you are right in that it depends how you like to use the sources and what tools you are most comfortable with. If your pdf reader doesn´t have a thumbnail view and doesn´t allow easy export of individual pages it will be a bit cumbersome.

Regarding the compression I see your point, a lot of rolls are compressed so much that it is difficult to read maps and gliederungen. I have only compressed rolls that are more than 2 Gb large (the ones published on the NARA website for instance), I find there is little loss by compressing them down to 6-700 Mb. A few times I have had to download a map separately to view all the details though.

[Mori]

Regarding the compression I see your point, a lot of rolls are compressed so much that it is difficult to read maps and gliederungen. I have only compressed rolls that are more than 2 Gb large (the ones published on the NARA website for instance), I find there is little loss by compressing them down to 6-700 Mb. A few times I have had to download a map separately to view all the details though.

I share the same experience. About 1Gb is enough to have documents 100% confortable to read. This includes occasional copies of newspapers.

Some maps may require a better resolution, but microfilming them in clack and white and spliting them across multiple frames wasted them to start with. I am yet to see any author relying on German maps found in the NARA microfilm section.
(Layers being an exception).

[AvB]

And what is interesting is that a lot of maps are missing from for example Armeekorps KTB's. I don't know if they're in another T-series, or that they weren't available during the microfilming process in the 50's and 60's? Or that they were too big anyway.

[Mori]

T314 AK has not been digitized by NARA yet. But see the many available there to get an idea on maps: http://wwiidigitalarchives.org/t314-arm ... nzer-corps

[Gunsche]

Anyone know where to find a good quality copy of T313 R72? (1.Panzerarmee)

[Mori]

Anyone know where to find a good quality copy of T313 R72? (1.Panzerarmee)

Email me