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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

The best way to access lots of War Diaries


WilliamRev

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For my MA dissertation a year ago I downloaded 40 war diaries from the National Archives at £3.50 per diary, which was fine at the time. But for my forthcoming PhD I need to access several hundred war diaries. I have a subscription to Ancestry, but have only been able to download diaries page by page, and that is when I can find them (the indexing seems bizarre) so I am looking for a more effective solution.

 

It seems to me that my best bet is to part with £350 for the Naval and Military Press CD-ROM of war diaries. Looking through the forum, I find lots of posts from 2014, mostly saying that the product is good but with flaws. There is nothing more recent on the forum. So, in 2019, is this CD-ROM worth the money, or is there a better way to access war diaries? Any and all opinions welcome!

 

Thanks, William

Edited by WilliamRev
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N & MP diaries mentioned above are still acccessible, but with a subscription. One year £ 95.

 

Martin

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Many thanks for these thoughts and suggestions, all of which I will consider. Can anyone with the CD-ROM of war diaries say how happy they are with it; do you wish you had paid the £95 (or whatever) per year instead?

 

William

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The war diaries at Naval and Military Archives (at £10 per day, or £95 per year etc.) are nicely catalogued, but it seems as though you have to download the diaries one page at a time - the one I am currently looking for is 450 pages long, and that is going to take me most of a day. Or am I wrong? Can one download a whole war diary at once without having to resort to paying £3.50 from The National Archives? This is what I need to do. (Dai, thanks for the suggestion of me visiting Kew in person to download them for free, but this is not currently practical for me).

 

As before, all thoughts are welcome. Many thanks!

 

William

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I am not sure if DownThemAll a Firefox extension will work for that site. A few years ago, I used it to successfully download complete Canadian War Diaries. It would not work for the 'ancestry' diaries but worth trying the N & MP version.

 

It might be worth contacting them to ask them if it's possible, or if any other method can be achieved?

 

Mike

Edited by Skipman
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  • 4 weeks later...

Thanks Mike,

 

I have tried DownThemAll, and it no longer works, but thanks for the suggestion.

 

I'm back to thinking that I am going to have to part with £350 for the Naval and Military Press CD-ROM ,as the best way to download complete war diaries, rather than page by page. But suggestions are still welcome...

 

William

Edited by WilliamRev
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