Imperial War Museum

Slightly confusingly, the Imperial War Museum homepage covers three Imperial War Museums (London, Duxford and IWM North) as well as the pages for the Cabinet War Rooms and the HMS Belfast. The remit of the Imperial War Museum is quite specific in covering Military Affairs after 1914; those looking for other periods should look at the National Army Museum. Within this period, the museum's site is packed with information about the collections and displays. The visitor information is full and furnished with two detailed maps, and the permanent collections are described in detail.

The shop has a good range of goods illustrated online, and one can order online. Some of the museum's handbooks and gallery guides appear throughout the site and are also available in the same way. Details are given of the extensive printed materials produced by the Government and a full catalogue is downloadable in Adobe Acrobat format. This looks too specialist for the general reader, but for a serious researcher both this and the list of combat maps would be an invaluable resource.

Online Exhibitions The variety of these online exhibitions gives a good impression of the breadth of this museum.

It's not just tanks and guns for bearded military enthusiasts, a wide range of social history is covered in exhibitions on
the Holocaust and the experience of Mass Industry during the Second World War.

These exhibitions are largely descriptions of the physical exhibitions, with added information describing specific concepts or results. The most interesting use of the medium are the taped reminiscences from Korean war veterans. The clips are short and play easily on any of the higher RealPlayer downloads. Those interviewed have suffered the full range of wartime experiences and are movingly matter of fact about warfare and imprisonment during the conflict. This approach should be made more widespread as it is not too memory intensive and brings the past to life.

Given the two recent films (U-571 and Enigma), it would be surprising if the Enigma coding machine did not make an appearance. It has its own online exhibition here, and the history of military codes is traced with a good selection of images from the First World War onwards. A selection of games and puzzles for children are also included.