We’ve cracked 6,000 subject headings with more to come. There’s over 11,000 resources (magazine articles, book chapter headings, kit listings etc).

Cross referencing the resources to the subjects is underway and should prove to be a valuable feature for MDB.

Under the covers, there’s been a bit of slicing and dicing to the database structure as data loading and testing has progressed.

After my previous woeful attempt at predicting a launch date, I’m reluctant to try again. But, as the man said in Star Wars, “almost there!!”

Once the subject headings are complete, we can resume indexing and uploading new resources such as books, DVDs, models etc.

The subject list is what is really going to make this thing sing, so it’s well worthwhile taking time to get it as usable as possible.

Currently aiming for launch at the end of May (2013!).  There, I’ve said it!!!

Covers and content listings for all 84 issues of Model Military International magazine have been uploaded.  That brings us up to over 3,100 article references already (MilMod and MMI combined).

Also, we’ve started back-filling issues of Military Modelling prior to Volume 20. Our current earliest issue indexed is April 1971 (Vol 1 No 4!). You’ll see these fill in progressively.

You may have noticed things filling out along the top menu bar too. You can now browse Personal and Corporate names and view related resources. So, you can look up Steve Zaloga, for instance, and view the list of all 136 articles we have indexed (I think we’ve only scratched the surface on that one!!).

Subject headings are now visible, and are about to expand by quite a lot.  We’ve got over 6,000 vehicle / aircraft / ship listings almost ready to be added to the database.  Then we gotta link the resources (books, articles etc) to the subjects.  You’ll notice that we’ve done some subject linking on some magazine articles already – this will grow rapidly once we’ve got the data matching down pat (ie producing an acceptable level of bizarre cross-references – oh well).

The Coverage menu items currently have only blank holding pages, but will start to fill out very soon.  “Coverage” is a library concept referring to the time period (temporal), or geographic area, covered (or addressed by) the resource. For example, clicking on “Napoleonic Period” will bring up everything we have related to this period (books, magazine articles etc) – provided it’s indexed correctly of course.  Ahem.  Likewise for geographic areas.

We’ll also start filling out the content “down” the menu list too. A few books, DVDs, model kits etc will be entered to show examples of the various types of content the database is designed to keep track of, and which will fill out over time.

So, there’s plenty to be getting on with.  Stay tuned!

Oh, and please disregard the post date – it has no significance whatsoever. No really.

The data will be enhanced progressively, and other magazine data uploaded over the next few weeks.

Initial data upload is pretty well complete and we are now working on weaving display of the data into our brand new WordPress website.

Won’t be long now.  Honestly!