The Western Front Association enters the burgeoning "WW1 maps on DVD" market.

These DVDs are the result of a collaborative project in which the Association has scanned a number of the maps held at the Imperial War Museum. There are more DVDs already available and more promised.

In comparison with other mapping products now on the market, these DVDs are as cheap as chips and represent good value. Each contains a large number of colour maps and plenty of interest for those researching unit movements or the features of the area. Those on the "Ypres" DVD are trench maps, mostly of 1:10000 scale and from a range of dates during the war, covering the area from Boesinghe and round the Ypres salient towards Ploegsteert. The Official History DVD contains scans of maps from that series, but only for France and Flanders and even then only up to 26 March 1918.

The information is presented in a very raw state. To view and print the maps the user has to rely on whatever software they have that reads JPG image files. While there is some supporting information, the maps are essentially listed and without the provision of much by way of tools to guide the user to a particular map. For the most part I find myself using Windows Explorer to view the folder structure and find particular files. Microsoft's Image Viewer (built in as a part of Windows) provides a decent enough application for viewing and printing. The Official History DVD is relatively easy in terms of finding the map you want, but unless you have intimate knowledge of the area, finding a given trench or map reference on the Ypres DVD can be very difficult.

Potential buyers should also be aware that these DVDs can put enormous strain on the PC. The images are very large (some over 50Mb in size). On my pretty powerful laptop, the DVD drive goes berserk when I am trying to find my way to a particular map, especially if my folder view is set to show thumbnail images. The process uses up very considerable computing resources and if you have a machine with say 1Mb memory my guess is that you might as well make a cup of tea while just waiting for a set of thumbnails to show. Overall, I found both DVDs unwieldy and taking some getting used to.

One surprise is data security. A WFA logo has been discreetly added to each map but other than that there seems no restriction (aside from the image sizes) to copying individual images or even burning the whole DVD.

So, a tremendous set of data for a very reasonable price, somewhat let down by useability.

I am not sure whether "Somme 1st July 1916" is the first entry made by book publisher Pen & Sword into the digital world, but my exploration of the product suggested that they are early on the learning curve. That is perhaps appropriate, for this presentation of the British army's worst day in history as far as casualties are concerned very much follows the revisionist trend. No "lions led by donkeys" here.

The product is presented as a two-disc DVD set. It worked well for me through Microsoft XP and Vista with Windows Media Player on a PC and I assume it would play equally well through a DVD player and TV set. I can not tell whether it works on non-UK format DVD players, for neither the packaging or "readme" file I found on the disc gives me a clue.

The first component of the content is titled as "Footage", broken into "Topography", "Cemeteries" and the "Academic Point of View" . "Topography" breaks down into, for example, a sub-menu listing "Gommecourt", "46th Division assault", "56th Division assault", "VII Corps casualties" and "The main assault". It turned out when I viewed the various episodes that make up the content that topography was not only a description of the ground but of the battle itself.

The sub-menu was not well presented on my screen in that the text on each button was larger than the button itself, so I could only read the middle of the phrase. I chose to start with "... ommecour ...". Clicking on a selection starts an animated episode, being a narrated movie consisting of a slideshow of contemporary and modern photographs, video clips and maps. The episodes in themselves are interesting and accurately told but as the subject of 1st July has received so much coverage it is all rather well-worn stuff. It may be of interest to those new to the subject or the mildly interested, but anyone who has studied the Somme in reasonable detail would not find too much that was new. I felt the delivery was without tempo and the narration rather monotone: in fact, my son (16) said he enjoyed the episodes more with the sound off. Maybe it was me, but I could find no way to leave a film in progress and return to the main menu.

"Cemeteries" is a narrated slide show of photographs and videos of some of the cemeteries and memorials between Gommecourt and La Boisselle.

You have to change to Disc Two to view the "Academic Point of View", which turned out to be a film of a discussion between the redoubtable John Bourne, Gary Sheffield and Peter Simkins of the University of Birmingham Centre for First World War Studies. This can be viewed straight through or in episodes. This time there is a considerable switch. If you had not studied the war or the Somme then the opening episode, on Haig's relationship with Rawlinson, might be rather perplexing. Indeed it was while watching this that I began to feel there was a context or scene setting missing from the DVD: there was no overview, placing 1st July or the Somme in its proper place. It was presumably assumed, which begs the question "who exactly is this aimed at?".

The second component is a selection of printable maps and cemetery photographs, all contained in one 22Mb Adobe Acrobat PDF file. This is not accessible at all through the main menu: the user has to go into the DVD itself using "My Computer" or Explorer. To find a particular map or photograph, I found simply scrolling through the pages or using the vertical slider easier than navigating using the menu embedded in the PDF. The selection of maps is principally based on those presented in the British Official History and the cemetery photographs are modern day. The PDF file can be found on Disc One.

If I have one criticism of the product it is useability. Navigation is weak and on-screen controls for PC users largely absent. Switching between two discs is a nuisance (if inevitable) and having an entire feature inaccessible from the main menu is very strange. Pen & Sword will need to work on this for future titles, which, if they follow the pattern set by the company's Battleground Europe book series, will presumbly be produced in great profusion. At a cover price of £20 it represents reasonable value for the content, but overall I came away with a feeling that this was a nicely-produced home video rather than a professional package.