The Crittenden Automotive Library Update: March 2007

Bill Crittenden
The Crittenden Automotive Library
March 26, 2007

Site Design

The Crittenden Automotive Library has taken a more prominent profile on CarsandRacingStuff.com.  This is mostly to reflect that the Library is the site, and to ease navigation and to better display to new visitors the variety of information that the Library contains.

Basically, the Library's navigation page was moved to a box on the front page of the site, and tweaked to look better and describe each section better.  It was given its own logo, and the words "CarsandRacingStuff.com" was removed from the site logo.

In addition, the new borderless layout has the advantage of being scrollable to the right, with absolute positioning.  That means that wide charts don't push the content of the page to below the left-side page margin.

V8 Supercar Series Photographs

For a long time I've held the opinion that Australians kick ass, and Gary Tierney does not disappoint.  Recently the Library received a bunch of top quality photos of the V8 Supercars racing in Queensland from Gary Tierney/Trolistal Photography.  This is our first Supercar material on the site.

Articles

The Articles section has had the most additions to it during the previous month.  Content from the Voice of America, an economic commentary from George Reisman, a bunch of articles by Jeremy Sellers, a model kit review from Nick Gregory, more from Wikinews and three historic articles from the New York Times have given the Articles section some weight.

A redesign of the section's navigation gives it a cleaner look to accompany the new material.  It's almost a whole new section compared to just a few months ago.

This month was a little thin on new content, in part because I've spent a lot of time trolling through the VoA's news archive for material.  I'm almost through it, and once I am more time will be dedicated to getting that material online for you to see.

NASCAR related news articles are now available on the SpeedwayMedia.com news feed.  The news feed appears in the left-hand column of the Ariticles index.

Speeches

There's a new section on the site, for text of speeches.  The two Presidential Radio Addresses already on the site have joined with several speech texts from the Environmental Protection Agency to form the new section.

The Real Library

For the few that know me personally know that the Library is supplied with much of its information from my personal collection of automotive books, magazines and brochures.  This month was a little thin on new content in part because I had received a donation of furniture for building a new office.  I'd been spending a great deal of my available time reorganizing my basement to accomodate the new office and "moving in."

While the office's accomodations are still far from luxurious (unfinished concrete basement furished with 1970's office building castaways), it is far more organized and the material far more accessible.  Three new file cabinets, a lateral file and a new desk have turned it from a corner of a basement into a real office.  The previous desk was simply an unfinished door on top of two old file cabinets.

So I've spent most of the last month moving furniture around, downstairs, and then filling it with all types of stuff.  Then the desk went in a new location and was wired for power and high-speed internet.

Another piece of furniture I acquired was a mail sorting table that makes a perfect setup for my model car building and scale car photography.  So in the coming seasons I hope to get some models built and photographed.  I also plan on getting some photos of Action die cast on the site as examples of various paint schemes (in the absence of photos of the genuine articles).