ARCRE British & Commonwealth War Diary Search Engine - no longer online

Discussion in 'Research Material' started by PsyWar.Org, May 4, 2011.

  1. PsyWar.Org

    PsyWar.Org Archive monkey

    I've been busy for the last week or so putting together a dedicated search engine to help find British Army and Commonwealth war diaries in the National Archives, Kew (TNA).

    Here's the link to the search engine: Arcre - War Diary Search

    It's still in the Beta stage at the moment, so I very much welcome feedback from you all.

    As you can see a particular war or WWII theatre can be selected to narrow down a search or you can search all wars and theatres. The date ranges are automatically filled in but can be changed to suit your own needs. But of course if you select WWI and then put a date range of 1939-1940, don't expect to get any results!

    If you hover over one of the search results the diary's hierarchy will be shown. Clicking on the link takes you directly to the TNA catalogue page for that entry.

    This search engine, however, should make it much easier to track down unit diaries than the offical TNA catalogue.

    For example if you want to find the diaries for the 225 Field Company, Royal Engineers, you will have much better results using a search string like "225 Engineers" than you would from the official catalogue. - I hope anyway! ;)


    Lee
     
    Kiwi Sapper, muggins, nicks and 6 others like this.
  2. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

    Thanks Lee.

    Excellent resource, look forward to tinkering about with it.
     
  3. Pieter F

    Pieter F Very Senior Member

    That would be very helpful!
     
  4. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Ha !

    Its better than I thought it would be-Well done Lee, its in my Fav's :D

    The brews are on me when I see you next.

    A
     
    Kiwi Sapper likes this.
  5. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    Great Stuff!

    (MOD: needs a Sticky)
     
  6. John Lawson

    John Lawson Arte et Marte

    skimple like me

    Excellent
     
  7. PsyWar.Org

    PsyWar.Org Archive monkey

    Thanks all for the kind words. Anyone managed to break it yet? I'm sure there are a few bugs in it.

    Once the accounts are set up, it will have facilities to save searches and any other useful features that might spring to mind.

    Andy, nope, I still owe you a brew ;)
     
    von Poop likes this.
  8. PsyWar.Org

    PsyWar.Org Archive monkey

    Oops, forgot to mention that there's no data yet for Royal Marine Commandos in WWII.
     
  9. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Tut..In that case I've deleted it :lol:
     
  10. Paul Reed

    Paul Reed Ubique

    Excellent idea, well done.
     
  11. RJL

    RJL Senior Member

    Lee, that's fantastic. Thanks for sharing it.
     
  12. Oldman

    Oldman Very Senior Member

    Lee
    A very usefull search tool, thank you for sharing it with the forum members it will be appreciuated
     
  13. WhiskeyGolf

    WhiskeyGolf Senior Member

    Cheers Lee, looks nice and simple to use (my kind of search engine) :D
    Well done.
     
  14. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Great Stuff!

    (MOD: needs a Sticky)
    But...
    Geoff, Geoff!
    He's muscling in on your 'clever buggers' territory.

    Isn't it about time you two boffins put your heads together? - faintly scary/proficient techno types astride the military history Internerd etc.
    Some sort of twittering device that beams documents & data straight into people's brains maybe?

    Sticky already sorted by someone.
    ~A
     
  15. Rich Payne

    Rich Payne Rivet Counter Patron 1940 Obsessive

    Well done Lee. this would have saved me lots of time if it had existed a few years ago. I spent about a week just trying to work out how the NA thing worked.

    I do seem to have thrown up a fault with my first attempt unfortunately.

    One thing that it does do is highlight the inconsistent cataloguing at the NA.

    I tried to have a look at all the HQ diaries for 2nd Infantry Division, 1939 - 1940 and was surprised when searching under '2nd Division' that no CRE diary turned up.

    A further search shows that whilst most of the HQ units are listed as '2nd Division', the CRE diary is under '2 Divison Commander Royal Engineers'

    Unfortunately, searching for '2 Division' is giving problems as entering '2 Division', WWII and 1939 - 1940 is also bringing up a whole load of WW1 diaries (including 2 brigade).

    It would be helpful if '2' and '2nd' in a unit title could search both possibilities (and no WW1 !)
     
  16. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    But...
    Geoff, Geoff!
    He's muscling in on your 'clever buggers' territory.


    You can never have too many ' clever buggers'.

    Sticky already sorted by someone.
    ~A
    Thanks.
     
  17. PsyWar.Org

    PsyWar.Org Archive monkey

    Rich, thanks for the great feedback.

    The main issue here is that certain WWI diaries don't have a date range specified in the data so at the moment they are returned in all date range searches.

    If selecting a WWII theatre then they would be filtered out anyway. However, when searching "all" theatres they are still in the mix.

    For now if you know the correct theatre it's best to select that rather than "all".

    This problem is easily fixed, although deciding on which of the possible solutions gives the best database performance is the fun part :) I'll tinker with it tomorrow.

    Automatically doing a search on "2" and "2nd", hhhmmmm need to have a think about the best way of doing that...

    At the moment the search is very specific and matches all words exactly (although not case sensitive). I do intend to add other features like wildcards, AND, OR, etc. at some point.



    Well done Lee. this would have saved me lots of time if it had existed a few years ago. I spent about a week just trying to work out how the NA thing worked.

    I do seem to have thrown up a fault with my first attempt unfortunately.

    One thing that it does do is highlight the inconsistent cataloguing at the NA.

    I tried to have a look at all the HQ diaries for 2nd Infantry Division, 1939 - 1940 and was surprised when searching under '2nd Division' that no CRE diary turned up.

    A further search shows that whilst most of the HQ units are listed as '2nd Division', the CRE diary is under '2 Divison Commander Royal Engineers'

    Unfortunately, searching for '2 Division' is giving problems as entering '2 Division', WWII and 1939 - 1940 is also bringing up a whole load of WW1 diaries (including 2 brigade).

    It would be helpful if '2' and '2nd' in a unit title could search both possibilities (and no WW1 !)
     
  18. PsyWar.Org

    PsyWar.Org Archive monkey

    But...
    Geoff, Geoff!
    He's muscling in on your 'clever buggers' territory.

    Isn't it about time you two boffins put your heads together? - faintly scary/proficient techno types astride the military history Internerd etc.
    Some sort of twittering device that beams documents & data straight into people's brains maybe?

    Sticky already sorted by someone.
    ~A

    Ah I still have a long way to go before reaching the clever bugger category. ;) In fact one of my reasons for putting together this search engine is to learn a lot more about database querying, etc.

    Very much a rookie at the moment!
     
  19. BFBSM

    BFBSM Very Senior Member

    Lee,

    This is excellent. Found two series I want to look at in the future in seconds.

    Quick note, the buttons to the left for site navigation don't all work. But that is not a deal breaker.

    Mark
     
  20. PsyWar.Org

    PsyWar.Org Archive monkey

    Oh yeah, I meant to mention that as well. None of the navigation in the menu bar is working just yet. Basically I haven't gotten around to creating the pages. I've been concentrating on the fun stuff of programming the search engine and database.

    Next job is to get those pages completed and then on with the programming of the content management system, user authenication and some bells and whistles for the search engine like saving a search, sending an advanced document order directly to the National Archives, requesting documents to be copied, etc.

    There are some other useful search engines in the pipeline too, if this one proves a success.
     

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