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Specializing in U.S. Military History

Site Map		Thank you for visiting our site. On 11 November 2007, The Digital Bookshelf donated an Honor Roll of over 3,400 California Soldiers, Sailors and Marines who died during WWI to the California State Military Museum for free public access on the museum's website. Visit our news page for more details and a link to the Honor Roll. Whether you are a first time visitor or a returning customer, we invite you to take a short tour of our products and services, using this "Take a Tour" link. For those of you wishing to go immediately to The Digital Bookshelf products, please follow the link at left to "Products" for an overview of what's available, or go to the Product List.
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World War One History Portal

Welcome to The Digital Bookshelf

Vision: to preserve information about America's participation in World War One in order to:

- honor the sacrifices made on the battlefield.

- recognize the efforts on the "homefront."

- assist individuals searching for their ancestors.

- encourage scholarship on the war and the capture of "lessons learned" to build a better future.

Process: to accomplish the goals above, we:

- acquire contemporary source material (unit histories, unpublished reports, diaries, newspapers, photographs, medals, insignia, etc.).

- digitize the materials to make them available worldwide via the internet through partners (libraries, universities, individual subscribers).

- create new products from the source information (websites and databases) in order to leverage technology to interrelate the primary sources and make them available in new and more efficient ways.

- seek to create a repository to safeguard the original primary source documents that we have been fortunate enough to acquire; eventually we plan to turn this repository over to an institution capable of maintaining it as a public trust.

Business model: our primary goal is the preservation of information, not the pursuit of the dollar. However, it takes capital at every step in the process, and the more capital we have available, the more information we can preserve. To this end, we acquire funding through:

- subscription-based access to our on-line materials for our partner institutions.

- individual purchases of CD-ROMs.

- donations.

How can you help?

- refer us to your local academic institutions (libraries, universities) -- a press kit will be available soon from us to present to your local institutions.

- purchase CD-ROMs (view our product list).

- make a donation in any amount (NOTE: this donation is NOT tax deductible, as we are NOT a non-profit foundation) We will be setting up a section to recognize donors. Donations can be made in your name or "in memory of" someone. Helping to further the republication and the study of World War One history is a great way to honor the memory of a doughboy ancestor.