Internet Modeler Editorial

References

With Tom Frisque selling off his book collection, I thought it would be a worthy time to revisit the subject of reference material. For those who have seen what Tom is selling, you know that it is a stunning collection of books and magazines covering aviation around the world during the WW2 years. With such a comprehensive collection, how does one organize it all? Tom's structure of organizing that material by country is probably the most logical, but it lends some interesting problems when you come across a book that deals with, say, the air war over China between Japan and Russia. You've got three possible places to file this book, any one of which would only deal with a portion of what the book actually covers.

I know of some people who create file folders to store reference material in. They cut up magazines and such and file the material in the proper sections. This seems like a good way to go, as it is very structured and simple to maneuver through. When some new material shows up, it simply gets filed in the proper place and is ready when it is needed. However it too has shortcomings, such as how to file a photo that shows, say, a flightline that shows four different aircraft types from three different countries. It also opens up potential problems of mis-filing a folder, such as, say, putting the file on the Fokker D.VII in with the Fokker-Netherlands folder. It also does not help much with the sorting of large books (relevant titles can be written down in the folder, but you still have to find those books).

Whatever method you choose to store your references, the most important thing is to find what is comfortable for you, and stick with it. The ultimate goal is to know immediately where some particular information is and be able to get to it quickly. Another modeler I know has his library organized into several different areas, some based on countries, some based on publisher. It seems haphazard, but when I ask him for information on a specific subject, he is able to immediately turn to the information and provide me with a stack of references that would have taken me hours to find on my own. His system works for him, and he's become so attuned to it that no other method would work. I can only hope that my system will eventually result in similar results....