National Library of Scotland - military resources

Have I mentioned lately what an extremely useful resource for military historians, the National Library of Scotland has become?

For a start, the material has been digitised to a high quality specification from original material held at the National Library. The image above is taken from Hart's Annual Army List for 1913 and there are many such volumes which can be easily accessed. Here' a list of Army Lists from 1839 to 1915, and clicking on any of the links on this page opens up further links. There are also separate sections for the Royal Navy 1913-1940 and the Royal Air Force 1919-1945.

The National Library of Scotland's War section can be accessed by clicking on the link. This then opens up a number of different categories of which the Army Lists (noted above), Rolls of Honour and military maps are arguably the most interesting.  The military maps include First World War trench maps 1915-1918 and maps of Belgium from the Second World War.

Best of all is that this is a free resource, digitised by the National Library of Scotland and made freely available to a worldwide audience.

Maps - National Library of Scotland

The National Library of Scotland has published some wonderful maps (120,000 of them) which give great street-level detail over a number of years.  I've spent a number of happy hours going through these and I include this resource on this blog as using these maps can not only pinpoint home addresses for soldier ancestors but also identify where a man fought.

 

 

First things first. The website address is http://maps.nls.uk/index.html and the site is highly usable. Readers of this blog will be particularly interested to know that trench maps for France and Belgium from the First World War are also included on the site, as well as British War Office maps for Belgium covering the period 1942-1944. What's more, you can overlay these maps on a modern Google or Bing map which in turn could prove invaluable when tramping the muddy fields of France and Belgium.

 

In the images above, from the top, we see a map of Ypres in June 1917, then a satellite view of Ypres today, and finally a combination of the two. It's really very clever. Go and play.

 

I offer a fast, efficient and cost-effective military research service. Have a look at my military research page and drop me a line if you think I might be able to help.