Moving along

Well, we certainly made up for not meeting last week. I have been in contact with COL Eugene Palka, US Army, who is the department head for the Geography and Environmental Engineering Dept. at West Point, and author of a new book on the subject, as well as Dr. Joseph Hupy, current president of the Military Geography Specialty Group of the AAG. Both men have been very helpful and are excited about this project. They sent me several items, including papers, syllabi, and newsletters, to give us a feel for where the field is at the moment. These items will also aid us in gathering relevant sources for the bibliography, which is still under construction. Well, that is all for this week. I hope to update you again either later this week, or at our next meeting.

Google Group created

We did not meet this week, but that does not mean that nothing was done. I have created a Google Group called The Military Geography Society, with the goal to link scholars, military professionals, and others interested in military geography to both raise awareness for the field, as well as aid the three of us in our work. If you are interested, check out the group, join up, and spread the word. See you next week, if not sooner.

Ideas for the future

Well, even though we started a bit late (you are forgiven Dr. Munski, it happens), we accomplished much today. We discussed the issue of limitations on our possible requests to the library and decided that in order to have the best possible results we will need to prioritize the sources we uncover, so that we can present the library with a possible list of important, must have, works. In addition, we examined the idea of working with the Alumni Association and Development officers to look into the possibility of getting alumni, or friend of the university, assistance on this project, with the goal being a possible Military History/Geography collection named after the person(s) that would help us. We also looked at a possible filmography on the subject. We will not be meeting next week, but I will try to post an update next week. Have a great week.

A busy meeting this week

This week’s meeting was very productive, as I showed Dr. Munski and Tim the power of the site and the recent changes I made to the Bibliography page. They offered helpful suggestions to it and I made the changes. In addition, Tim shared with us his idea for his poster, which will focus on the concept of Missions Other Than Wars (MOTWs) as they relate to the Air Force, specifically the recent Air Force mission evacuating Americans from Lebanon during the Summer War between Lebanon and Israel last year. I will continue working on the site and hopefully we will hear something from publishers and others concerning acquisition of sources. Again, as always, if you can help in anyway, please email us.

A slow week

This past week was slow and not much was done, but I have shown Dr. Munski the power of the blog as an academic tool and he is slowly coming on board. Hopefully, with him on board, this site will expand rapidly, as the three of us put our collective efforts behind it.

Meeting with the library

This week, we met with the reference librarian staff at the Chester Fritz Library (the UND library), as well as, the director of Special Collections.  We met to discuss sources that the library would have access to and came up with some potentially useful databases to search for online journal articles.  The Special Collections division does not have anything specifically relating to military geography, but they do have some potentially good sources on military history, which could be tied into our project.  After our meeting, we ventured over to the Memorial Union to discuss our findings over coffee and eliminated some of our sources for varying reason, mainly that they were not applicable to our examination.  With these sources we will strive to find more sources from journals and other publications.  As always, we are looking for help from those of you with knowledge in this area, so please consider emailing us (see the contact in the sidebar).  Until next week, keep researching.

Project update thus far

Having just created this outlet for the course, I felt that I should post an update on what we have done to this point.  So far, we are moving slowly, but moving along none the less.  We have considered an article on Military Geography by Eugene Palka, a West Point instructor in Geography.  We have also looked at other possible outlets, including film, possible North Dakota connections, and accessing the resources of the Military Geography specialty group under the American Association of Geographers.  We will soon be meeting with one of our reference librarians and are continuing to examine outlets for review copies of various texts on the subject.