Section 1 : Introduction
Various UFO books contain recommendations of the equipment which a UFO investigator should own . Jacques Vallee has written (in his book “Confrontations”) that: “Along with the instrumentation in the back of his truck, anyone going into the field in an attempt to document a UFO report should be equipped with a good sense of humour, a fair dose of skepticism, and a solid background in humility”.
I’d suggest that some knowledge of previous attempts to investigate UFOs would also be extremely valuable.
During the last few years, I’ve often voiced concern about the amount of time and effort which is completely wasted within ufology. So many people seem to be content to start from scratch, ignoring the vast amount which has already been written about ufo reports. The rate of progress within ufology is slow (or possibly even non-existent). This will never change unless the amount of reinvention of the wheel within ufology is reduced.
So, what can be done?
Rather than simply moan about it, a few years ago I decided that it would be useful to draw together some references to books and other material. I’ve previously circulated a 1,800 page Chronology which attempted to draw together references relating to some of the more frequently discussed matters in the history of Ufology and SETI (see Section 2.3 below). However, that Chronology was aimed at researchers that wanted to find references to discussion of a particular incident or document, rather than providing recommendations for reading for those new to ufology. There are, of course, already a number of lists of recommending reading online, but few of these lists take into account the cost of the books recommended. However, for a relatively small amount of money, it is possible to buy a fairly informative set of UFO books that would take your level of understanding beyond that evident in most on-line discussions of this topic. I’ll post recommendations for a cheap “starter pack” (based on a budget of, say, $30 or $50) in another post. However, I’ll start with this post on material which can be obtained for free.
Given my view that there is a massive gap between the material about UFOs available off-line (in a mass of books and magazines) and the relatively limited material available on-line, some of you may not be surprised to hear that I think a library card is probably the single most valuable item that a UFO researcher can obtain for free. Other than that, it really is a matter of trying to find the more useful on-line resources.
Finding useful and interesting material about UFOs on the internet involves a considerable amount of sorting the wheat from the chaff. I’ve set out below some of the results of my own attempt to do this sorting during the last few years…