Browsing the Stacks at the Lunar Library

Unlike many in my generation, I've never been particularly enamored of Mars. I don’t dislike it, but my interest has long been our Moon, such a tantalizingly close destination right there in the sky. Looking for a niche in the space field after graduate school, I decided to try to become the most knowledgeable person of my generation with regards to the Moon. It seemed the perfect Gen. X slacker goal - I'm part of a small demographic, studying a relatively esoteric (for my generation) topic. How hard could it be?

Well, very, as it turns out that there's a whole lot of knowledge regarding our Moon. I tend to lump it into pre- and post-Apollo. That which came before is much more cultural in nature, the gathered stories of untold generations of humanity fascinated by that constant ever-changing beacon in the sky. There's an increasing sophistication in that knowledge post-Renaissance as our tools started getting better and better, but even right before Apollo there were still many uncertainties reflected in many stories of the time.

Post-Apollo comes a deluge of information. There is an enormous amount of literature associated with the Apollo program itself, but slowly the data gathered by that program and others has been pieced together in useful ways, and we've been able to considerably advance our conception of what we can do on the Moon and how we can do it.

The process of researching all of this led to a slow amassment of more and more books and papers about all different aspects of our Moon. Eventually it grew to a size where it can properly be considered a library of our Moon. At this point I published a bibliography on the internet to help guide others who might be interested in studying things Lunar. This was, appropriately, at the Return to the Moon (later Space Arena) bulletin board sponsored by the Space Frontier Foundation.

Periodically I would update it, operating under the principle that it would only include titles of which I had a physical copy, but after the Return to the Moon Board was closed I needed a new host. Hobbyspace.com, a wonderful resource, was kind enough to share the server space, and added the important feature of hypertexting the sections from the initial listing. It was at this time that the Lunar Library proved its merit, as I relied heavily upon it during my contribution to the Moon chapter of "Kids to Space", which was a fascinating and wonderful experience, seeing all those fascinating questions from the kids and then ensuring I had the best possible answer by consulting the stacks.

Eventually, the guys at ‘Out of the Cradle’, from the famous Tsiolkovsky quote "The Earth is the cradle of mankind, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever", talked me into doing a new version at their blog site. They cleaned out a back corner of the server and I set up shop. How do you put a bibliography on a blog? One creates a “biblioblography”.

The main page consists of a roll-up of entries in all the subsections. This runs to 33 long web pages, consisting of hundreds of titles on the Moon and High Frontier. Each link carries, where available, an Amazon link, a link to the Publisher's website for that title, On-line text where I could find it, and Reviews done both at the website and elsewhere, as well as interviews at The Space Show. In essence I web-ified each bibliographic file card to take advantage of the hyperlink nature of the internet to pool knowledge in a way that cannot be done in print form alone.

The menu on the left of the page allows one to quickly narrow the listings to a particular area of interest, be it Moonbases, Selenography (the mapping of the Moon), or Selenology (the mineral and other natural resources of the Moon, such as vacuum). There are over 150 Moon-based science-fiction works in the Moon Fiction section, and over 75 have been reviewed in the blog’s forums with cross-linking.

The next major section is High Frontier, which deals with the varied aspects of becoming a space-faring, and not just space-visiting, civilization. This is again divided into areas of particular interest, from Biologics to Facilities/Infrastructure to Navigation and EML-1.

Most importantly, there is a section dedicated to Youth titles, though the target audience is teachers and educators. Each of the Moon and High Frontier is divided into fact and fiction, although sometimes a work is sufficiently pedantic despite being fiction to be included in the fact section. "Max goes to the Moon" is a good example, and I figure that if the National Science Teachers' Association likes it then it's probably okay in the fact section.

My hope is that more people who have an interest in the Moon will be able to find the resources they need to answer their questions. Teachers can find many useful tools, such as analogue rocks, scale marbles, slide sets, and some amazing on-line links, such as "Human Physiology in Space" for secondary schools which reproduces online a great text reference published a number of years ago, and which is still available for order. There are titles in Spanish and French, but you have to hunt for them as I do not yet have enough of each for their own separate sections. Inflatable Moon globes, a 3-D puzzle, games, and more. If you look far enough in each section you’ll also find web-only resources.

So enjoy your visit to the Lunar Library, and I hope you find something of interest.

NOTE: The views of this article are the author's and do not reflect the policies of the National Space Society.

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