The selected volumes give snapshots from before the war, its middle and end, and the immediate postwar world. The choice needs a repeatable pattern: selecting the same positions in successive decades makes comparisons more meaningful than choosing attractive volumes opportunistically. Archival book collections are incomplete, so the method has to identify the years actually available. A useful sample balances methodological consistency against the imperfect survival and availability of historical sources.
Notable Point · 6:09-10:58
Choosing consistent years for a war-era sample
A 1939, 1943, 1946, and 1949 sequence illustrates how a researcher can sample before, during, and after the Second World War.