- THE VIETNAM CENTER AND ARCHIVE
- Texas Tech University
How to Use the Virtual Vietnam Archive Maps Search Page
Find Coordinates / Resources
About the Page
In the right column of the Search Page are three boxes with links to other pages that may assist with searches. The top and bottom boxes, "Find Coordinates" and "Resources", will be covered on this page of the tutorial. "View the country" will be covered on the next page. The basic structure of the Resources pages is the same as the rest of the Virtual Archive.
Find Coordinates
When searching for a specific location in a country of Southeast Asia, such as a village or town, or a geographic feature like a named mountain, use the links in this column to view the gazetteers. Click on the link for the country you are interested in. This opens a new page with links to the gazetteer for that country. The gazetteers have been broken down into smaller segments due to their very large file sizes. Even the smaller files are over 1MB, so this is not recommended for people on dial-up connections.
The gazetteer is divided alphabetically. Click on the appropriate link to open the pdf file in Adobe Reader. The text of the gazetteers is small and badly printed, so they may be hard to read. Additionally, these PDFs are not searchable. Once you have found the coordinates you are looking for, click the back button on your browser to return to the listing, and then use the close button on the left of the page to close that window and return to the search page.
Resources
Currently, the only resource available is a map reading guide created by the US Army. A significant portion of the Vietnam Archive Map Collection is comprised of US Army maps, so this resource is provided to assist in reading these maps. A wealth of information is provided, such as understanding grid zones, scale information, informational symbols, etc... Clicking on a link opens the pdf file in Adobe Reader. These PDFs are searchable. Click the back button on your browser to return to the listing, and then use the close button on the left of the page to close that window and return to the search page.