International Defense Review, Jane's IDR, Wehrtechnik, and some other magazines

[skylancer-3441]

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For some time during last year and earlier this year I was visiting Russian State Library, and had an opportunity to make photos of pages of several military-related magazines from 1950s-2010s stored there, such as

Interavia's IDR predecessor - five issues from 1965-1967;
International Defense Review 1975-1991, 1993;
Jane's International Defense Review 1993-1999, 2003-2007;
Jane's Defece Weekly 1984-1997;
Military Technology 1988-1995, 1999;
Soldat und Technik 1988-1992, 1995-2003;
Wehrtechnik 1969-1991, 1995-2007;
Wehrtechnische Monatshefte 1955-1959, 1963-1967;
l'Armee 1967-1969;
and several others, including some Soviet magazines (in Russian).

Also, there are photos of some pages from several volumes of Jahrbuch der Wehrtechnik, Jane's Weapon Systems, Jane's Armour and Artillery and Jane's AFV retrofit systems.

I tried to "process" those photos (i.e. put into separate folders, rename, rotate, cut and/or distort back to rectangular shape and apply color-correction where necessary) over the last couple of months, but realised that this would take months or years, so I've decided to make them available "as is" ASAP instead.
Still, I'm aiming at doing that "put into separate folders, rename, rotate" part to all of them, so while most of photos are uploaded, some of them are not - that would take couple more days, or in the worst-case scenario, weeks.

Those are not cover-to-cover photos, that would take much more time. Cover and table of contents if available are absolute minimum, with pictures or articles which caught my attention, if any.
Also, some of magazine's pages or photos were cut out, and as you can see in text above, there are certain gaps in RSL's collection, for example they do not have JIDR issues for 2000-2002.

 

[greenmartian2017]

Skylancer, thanks for doing this. Much appreciated.

My curiosity leads me to ask these questions: Were any of these holdings restricted? By that I mean that the person seeking access had to hold a permission to read type of qualification...

Would the engineering collectives have such libraries as well? And would such issues be restricted in access there as well?

If you can talk to that, please do.

 

[skylancer-3441]

Publications related to (just manufacturing of? or more than that? no idea) explosives and drugs are restricted at RSL, in order to have access to those, someone - let's say student from university - should have an official letter from his faculty mentioning him and describing topic of his research.

It seems to be a common practice, although IIRC it's a grey area in legal terms as there are no law directly allowing such restrictions for non secret publications.
Article on this (in Russian, taking about library of Russian Academy of Sciences) -

http://www.rba.ru/content/activities/section/12/mag/mag11/13.pdf

Other things at RSL are restricted by the fact that they are still delivered only in the restricted collection's reading room, don't matter the content - could be something from 1940s or even early 20th century, - and would not be delivered in any other reading rooms,
and it's prohibited (although not impossible, I presume) to take photos of restricted access book's pages there (although it's not prohibited to write things down by hand via pen and paper or using mobile phone, and it's not prohibited to photograph restricted area's catalogue cards - my photos of those things are there https://cloud.mail.ru/public/9dEX/djuwzbp4V/карточки - library catalog cards in Russian/ДСП)

btw, that reading room is shared between restricted collection and collection on heavily illustrated books on Art (which presumably does not impose any restrictions on its visitors making photographs)

https://www.rsl.ru/photo/!_ORS/2-CHITATELIAM/2-chitaljnyje-zaly/pages/zal-IZO%20(2).JPG

here - only back row of tables is for restricted collection's visitors, and there aren't many anyway, and behind it that 5-section catalogue cabinet with 3 paintings on top of it contains cards on restricted access books.


Basically, everything of which I've photographed as least table of contents - is not restricted in any way by now. Plenty of it, including all Soviet magazines (so, excluding magazines in Russian, published after 1991) I'm about to upload, - was - back in Soviet times,
even though most of them contain nothing but translations of articles from Western military magazines, or annotations and lists of those articles.

It's a relic of Soviet restricted access system, and while plenty of those things were moved into open access,
some weren't and would not until someone takes care of it and delivers a letter or something, from publisher (of restricted material) to library, on removal of restrictions. In practice sometimes that is physically impossible, as some of the publishers ceased to exist decades ago, or unwilling to spend time answering such requests.


No idea about engineering collectives.

 

[skylancer-3441]

Those are not cover-to-cover photos, that would take much more time

That changed, as RSL imposed COVID-related restrictions on how many books visitor can order (as they put them on 3-day quarantine after visitor does not need those books any more, and that requires some space), and I decided to go from ~15-40 magazines per day down to ~5-10

Jahrbuch der Wehrtechnik vol.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 12 were photographed from cover to cover;
as well as 1-10 issues and supplements of JDW 1994 (vol.21) and two dozen issues from 1990;
two (out of two stored at RSL) issues of 1998 Jane's Intelligence Review plus supplement;
all 16 issues of Jane's Defence Upgrades 1997 (Vol.1) stored at RSL (out of 24 published) and 23 (out of 24 published) issues from 1998 (Vol.2);
as well as IDR 1975-04, 05, 06 and issues and supplements from 1989, 1990 and 1991-
were photographed from cover to cover.
(many of those are stored at "_tmp" folder

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as some files are not renamed, yet.)
More photos to come starting from tomorrow, as two-week hiatus when I worked as construction worker (on scaffolding assembly and installation of wire mesh for plastering, to earn for living) have ended this Sunday, allowing me to visit RSL again.

 

[kaiserbill]

I see the first picture in your first attachment in this thread is "Armed Forces", a South African magazine.
This magazine in the early to mid '90's often had articles on local weapons projects and developments which could be of great interest. IE: Systems that had been shrouded in the secrecy common at the time. As an example, almost the only pictures and info known to this day about the ZA-35 SPAAG is from an article in one of those magazines.

Were there many of these magazines from that time period in the collection?

 

[skylancer-3441]

No.
I've photographed and uploaded some pages from _all_ issues strored at RSL.
I can photograph those from cover to cover, tho, sooner if necessary.
No idea where to get more, as other library I'm aware of - National Public Library for Science and Technology (GPNTB) - does not have any issues at all.

 

[skylancer-3441]

https://cloud.mail.ru/public/9dEX/djuwzbp4V/IDR/
all IDR issues stored at RSL are photographed from cover to cover. This folder contains almost 100 Gb, probably some 70k photos - including about 30k duplicates. Once I delete those, and rename rest, I'll visit RSL for IDR issues once again - to reshoot those photos which turned blurry and unreadable, I expect to find at least couple of hundred of those.
Until then, I'll photograph Jane's Soviet Intelligence Review issues from 1989 and 1990 stored at RSL, as there aren't many, and 90s issues of Jane's Defence Weekly, as I've never seen those before because I've skipped them

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Thanks - some really nice articles in those IDR issues. I've only glanced through 1976 and 1977 so far.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Interestingly, the Soviet aircraft articles from 1976/1977 are all by one guy ( "Georg Panyalev") who was remarkably certain on, and woefully wrong about, almost every detail. He's the source of the mythical MiG-27 "RATO bottle attachments" for example.

Interested to know who he was - seems like a pen name.

 

[madhon]

https://cloud.mail.ru/public/9dEX/djuwzbp4V/_tmp/International Defense Review/
all IDR issues stored at RSL are photographed from cover to cover. This folder contains almost 100 Gb, probably some 70k photos - including about 30k duplicates. Once I delete those, and rename rest, I'll visit RSL for IDR issues once again - to reshoot those photos which turned blurry and unreadable, I expect to find at least couple of hundred of those.
Until then, I'll photograph Jane's Soviet Intelligence Review issues from 1989 and 1990 stored at RSL, as there aren't many, and 90s issues of Jane's Defence Weekly, as I've never seen those before because I've skipped them

Site prevents you downloading most of them due to them been over 4Gb ...at least my rough translation of the russian error implies that

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

You just need to download in 4gb batches.

 

[madhon]

You just need to download in 4gb batches.

The individual items are over 4gb, which prevents you from downloading them even individually

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

No, you just go into the year folder (e.g. 1977) and download say issues 1-3 only so you stay inside the limit. Its not rocket science

 

[madhon]

No, you just go into the year folder (e.g. 1977) and download say issues 1-3 only so you stay inside the limit. Its not rocket science

Ahhh ... the sites ui doesnt make that obvious, my fault.

 

[skylancer-3441]

https://cloud.mail.ru/public/9dEX/djuwzbp4V/Soldat und Technik/
Issues of Soldat und Technik from 1988-1994 and some from 1995 were photographed from cover to cover, and uploaded - duplicates were deleted, and sometimes files were renamed properly, sometimes not


https://cloud.mail.ru/public/9dEX/djuwzbp4V/Royal Tank Corps Journal, The Tank/
two issues of Royal Corps Tank Journal from 1937

also, couple of books in Russian were uploaded into books folder - 5 volumes on GABTU 1929(1918 or 19 actually)-1953, book on T-64's designer A. Morozov, textbook on tank design, and German book on 1943-1957 AFVs from across the world translated to Russian and published in USSR in 1961, and some others too

 

[skylancer-3441]

...Soldat und Technik issues all the way to 2004, stored at RSL, were eventually photographed from cover to cover.

After that I've switched to taking photos of Military Technology magazine (starting from 1988, as RSL does not have any earlier issues) from cover to cover - this one still not finished.

In all issues of International Defense Review all duplicate photos were deleted, though most files are still not renamed - and with my convenience in future renaming in mind, they are temporarily divided into pages w/ even numbers, pages w/ odd numbers, and separately photographed pictures.

contents of "International Defense Review" subfolder in "_tmp" folder were moved to "IDR" subfolder in core folder.
Whatever content previously was in "IDR" folder, now is mostly located in "_incomplete but all renamed" subfolder in same folder. Most of it eventually would be deleted, rest moved to appropriate folders in "IDR" folder

Same done to Soldat und Technik and Military Technology; this fate awaits other folders in "_tmp" subfolder too

...
More magazines and books in Russian were photographed, usually from 1920s-1940s.

 

[skylancer-3441]

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Eventually, Military Technology magazine issues were photographed, and many photos of full pages were renamed properly.

Duplicates from Soldat und Technik issues from late 90s and 00s were deleted.

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So, I've started to photograph issues of Wehrtechnik magazine from cover to cover. 1969-01 to 1980-04 were done, so far, and uploaded (duplicates were deleted, but files were not renamed) - about 20-25 issues are uploaded each week.

 

[skylancer-3441]

...until late November, issues of Wehrtechnik were photographed and uploaded all the way to 1988-06. Then I've redirected my efforts to deletion of duplicates,
until this week when I've started visiting RSL again, so Wehrtechnik issues 1988-07 to 12 were also uploaded.

2021 stats:

 

[uk 75]

error 404 showing

 

[skylancer-3441]

I've replaced dead links (in my posts in this thread) with new ones, all of them should be working now, unless I missed something

 

[Sgt_Miller]

Thank you very much for your tireless work, you are a hero! This is a godsend, exactly when the FlightGlobal archive just went into the dark a while ago.

 

[skylancer-3441]

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All of Wehrtechnik issues available at RSL - up to 2007 - were photographed and uploaded, with all duplicates deleted but files not renamed. Now this folder takes 64 Gb of space (that's not counting 6.3Gb of files from 2019/20).

Overall, 10 visits to RSL in February, 26 3/4 hours of taking photos in total, with some 14.5 Gb uploaded to mail.ru cloud so far.

...though at this point it's hard to say whether mail.ru cloud would be reliably accessible by users from outside of Russia in following weeks or months.

Jane's Defence Weekly is next.

 

[skylancer-3441]

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Vol.1 and Vol.2 of Jane's Defence Weekly, both from 1984, were photographed and uploaded in usual manner - w/o duplicates, and with files not renamed.

As it turns out, Internet Archive ebook library have scanned bw microfilm copies of International Defense Review magazine, 1968 to 1991, including issues not available at RSL

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

archive.org

also Ordnance/National Defense magazine, https://archive.org/details/pub_national-defense
and probably some others too. They are available there for "online borrowing" and reading (and saving pages as jpgs, for those tech-savvy enough to know about "inspect element" and some other functions of web browsers...
though on smartphones, with their primitive browser apps, similar to their desctop brothers in name but not functionality, some higher level of tech-savvy is required, not achieved by myself yet, so only option available seems to be taking screenshots) for registered users.

 

[publiusr]

I bought some issues of PROCEEDINGS as discards…cannot find them now.

 

[skylancer-3441]

As it turns out, Internet Archive ebook library have scanned bw microfilm copies of International Defense Review magazine, 1968 to 1991, including issues not available at RSL

All issues from 1968 to 1973, and also 01 to 03 from both 1974 and 1975, 03 from 1980 and 05 to 12 from 1991 were eventually downloaded - once I got to RSL' publicly available desktops, it was very fast and easy process - then renamed properly, and uploaded to cloud

https://cloud.mail.ru/public/9dEX/djuwzbp4V/IDR/

 

[skylancer-3441]

During rest of 2022 and first half of 2023 about 90 gb of files were uploaded, as Jane's Defence Weekly was photographed & uploaded all the way to vol.29 (1998)
/link to JDW folder is in previous message/,

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Jane's International Defense Review issues from 1990s and early 00s available at RSL were also photographed from cover to cover,

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along with 1950s & 1960s issues of Swiss magazine Armee-Motor,
JIDR files were renamed, mostly, JDW & Armee-Motor usually not.

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1960s issues of French magazine L'Armee (RSL has issues from 1962-1971; 1962-1969 were photographed; only some from 1962 & 63 were uploaded so far, as rest of them currently awaits "processing" by vFlat app),

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plus couple of books (although those are mostly in Russian)

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and some Jane's books in separate folder.

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From GPNTB library, 2 issues of Military Technology magazine from 1982 were photographed & uploaded