Of course I hate to remove content from the ShipIndex.org database; I’m always working on trying to expand, not contract, the database. But bad data is worse than no data, and an online resource recently disappeared, so I had to delete its contents from the database. The truth is, I have waited too long to remove this content, because I had been really pleased to get to 3.4 million citations, and removing 380,000 will be a big hit in getting to three and a half million citations.

While online resources are certainly wonderful – you can get to your results without leaving your home – they are most certainly not permanent. They exist in one place and everywhere at the same time, but then when they disappear, they’re gone completely. This is, obviously, not the case for books.

I have contacted the creator of the missing database, and haven’t heard back from him, but perhaps I’ll find another way of getting in contact, and maybe, just maybe, we can find a way to get that content in to ShipIndex separately.

One result of deleting these records is that there will be some of what we call “citationless ships” for a little while. These are entries for ships that now have no citations on them at all, because the only citation was from this one resource. I need to remove them from the database, but that will take a bit of time for some technical reasons. But I’m working on it, doing my best to keep the database clean and accurate.

Some good news is that I have scores (actually, four score, at present) of book files waiting to be imported. I’ve started adding those and have more to go. While they won’t add up to today’s lost 380,000 citations, they will get me back closer to that number, and since they’re all printed resources, they won’t disappear any time soon.