The Naval War College is in process of digitizing the 4,000+ page Command Summary of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, also known as the “Nimitz Gray Book.” This is one of the most important primary sources for World War II in the Pacific.
This is our first major digital initiative at the Naval War College. I hope to brainstorm with participants on how best to optimize scholarly use of these documents and perhaps allow us to work toward a more expansive portal that includes other war diaries, deck logs, dispatches, memoranda, etc. from this era. The Nimitz Command Summary has potential to serve as a “hub” document for such a portal, which would facilitate the type of cross-searching, analysis, and referencing that is presently so tedious for researchers using these sources in dispersed archives or online sites. We would also like to facilitate downloading/reuse by researchers for their own encoding or analysis projects. Beyond that, I’d like to gather any other creative ideas for timelining, visualizations, student engagement, etc. We will be incorporating this project into a World War II elective this fall.
I recently saw several databases created with KORA, including the Quilt Index, and felt something like Kora might meet our needs with minimal staffing/technology infrastructure requirements. But we are open to all ideas!
