All posts by Peter McCracken

Some more challenging website problems

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Categories: Building a Company, Website Improvements

I discovered yesterday that some people are having problems creating accounts and then subscribing to the database. This appears to be a result of a restructuring of our backend, which was incredibly valuable, but had some unintended badness. Testing before release didn’t uncover these problems, and in fact they continue to be difficult to nail down – though there is no question at all that they are happening.

The technical team is working on it and I hope we’ll have a solution live as quickly as possible. If you have information to share about what didn’t work for you, that could help us troubleshoot the problem, and I’ll also be sure to let you know when everything is working again.

Having these problems right after returning from the genealogy show at Olympia, in London, is incredibly frustrating, but I suppose there’s never a good time for these problems to crop up. We’ll get them straightened out as soon as we can.

Watch out for inaccurate citation numbers!

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The back-end enhancements mentioned in my last post now allow us to do some significant data improvements.

Over the next few days, I’m going to be doing some work to improve how we represent links into the impressive Ship Register Database provided by the library at Mystic Seaport. Initially, we described this resource as “Ship Register (1857-1900) Database, by G. W. Blunt White Library”. While that gives appropriate credit to Mystic Seaport’s library for creating this incredible database, it doesn’t describe what’s in the database, which is even more important. So we’re splitting out the database’s contents into three sections, reflecting the three publications that are included in this single database.

Those three publications are:

  • New-York Marine Register:  1858
  • American Lloyds’ Registry of American and Foreign Shipping:  1859, 1861-83
  • Record of American and Foreign Shipping:  1871-3, 1875-9, 1881-1900

I did find some discrepancies between what’s listed as being available, and what’s actually available. New-York Marine Register for 1857, for instance, is available on the site, but not searchable by vessel name. The same goes for the 1874 volume of Record of American and Foreign Shipping.

When we’re done, we’ll more accurately represent the sources for this data. However, until then, you may notice a dramatic, but inaccurate, increase in the number of citations in the ShipIndex database. We don’t want to remove any data for those who might be using it during this switch-over, and I decided that duplicate information, in some cases, was preferable to missing information. After we’ve imported all the data that’s linked to the new resources (that is, “New York Marine Register”, “American Lloyds”, etc.), we’ll delete the data listed under the old resource (“Ship Register Database”).

I don’t think it’ll take more than a day or so to get all the new data loaded, and the old data removed, but I’m not completely certain. I’ll add a note to this blog post when that’s complete.

New subscription options; new backend; new currencies

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Categories: Building a Company, Website Improvements

Lots of big changes are now live at ShipIndex.org. The site has just been significantly upgraded, and has much more power than before. Most of this isn’t visible; it’s primarily back-end work, but it will make importing data much quicker, and will also allow for much more flexible access to the world. IfWhen we are mentioned on NPR or in the New York Times (God willing), we should be able to handle the rush.

There are some significant changes for users, though. We now offer fixed-length subscriptions: you can buy access for just two weeks, for three months, for six months, or for a year. You can still subscribe on a monthly basis, and that price has been slightly lowered.

Also, in a big development, you can now pay for access in multiple currencies! If you want to pay in Pounds Sterling, Euros, Australian Dollars, or Canadian Dollars, you can now do that. What this really means is that I absorb the cost of the foreign transaction fee rather than you, but it also means you can feel more comfortable about the cost of the database, particularly if you’re not too familiar with the value of the American dollar.

The new pricing is as follows:

Monthly recurring:     $8 per month

Time-limited subscriptions are as follows:
Two weeks:     $ 6
Three months:  $22
Six months:    $35
One year:      $65

At the moment, I know there are some bits of webcopy that need to be updated, particularly more information up front about the pricing changes. I’ll get to those as quickly as I can.

Please tell me what you think about these changes. What other changes do you think would be helpful?

ShipIndex in London

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When I went to the ShipIndex mailroom today (OK, the Trumansburg, NY, post office), I found an envelope from England awaiting me. What was it? It’s ten passes to this year’s “Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE” exposition, in London, at the Olympia Exhibit Hall. I’m excited about going to London to exhibit at this show in a few weeks, and now I can share it with my ten closest friends!

Since I know very few people in London (and the one I know the best is leaving the morning of the conference), I’ve got lots of spare passes. Please let me know if you’d like one — they’re worth about £22 each! (It’s an expensive show.)

I’m getting ready for the show here at ShipIndex world headquarters — I’ve set up my dummy exhibit space to see how it’ll all go together, and my son has been weighing and filling bags of 100 bottle openers apiece. I’m hoping I correctly estimate how many postcards, bottle openers, and brochures to bring, and that I’ll have everything I need, especially since I’ll be in a foreign country with funky electricity and strange customs.

I’ll be at stand 311. If you’ll be in the neighborhood, please do come by and say hello. And if you want a pass, let me know.

Changing Conferences

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Categories: Building a Company, Conferences

In a previous post, I mentioned that ShipIndex is trying a bunch of new paths. One of those is to change the conferences I attend. Back at the old company I went to library conferences, library conferences, and library conferences. (And there are a lot of those…) In fact, ALA Midwinter is starting off today, and it’ll be the first ALA Annual or Midwinter show I haven’t attended in about 15 years. Now, though, I’ve added genealogy and maritime history conferences to the mix. I’ve attended two National Genealogical Society conferences, in Salt Lake City and in Charleston, SC, and I’ve attended a range of maritime history conferences and one or two maritime museum conferences. (Sometimes they’re combined.)

Of these, library conferences are far and away the most expensive. These are huge productions that cost a fortune for everything. (Internet access through the local providers at PLA, below, starts at a gut-reaming $885, for instance.) While I think that ShipIndex is an incredibly valuable tool for academic libraries (in supporting historians of all stripes) and for public libraries (in supporting genealogists), I apparently haven’t succeeded in getting my message across to librarians. In my career as a librarian and as a library vendor, I’ve attended every ALA Annual and Midwinter conference since about 1997, as well as every ACRL conference since then, plus a bunch of NASIG, UKSG, Charleston, and other conferences. The big ALA shows cost me the most, and I don’t have much to show for them, so this January will be a big change for me: I won’t be going to ALA Midwinter for the first time in a very long time.

There’s much more to the conferences than just meeting with librarians; meeting with other vendors is incredibly valuable, as is seeing what else is happening in the library world, and also just getting together with long-time friends. But the cost is too great, so I’m going to try a different path. I think that, from now on, I’ll focus on attending the ACRL and PLA conferences every other year (they alternate; last year was ACRL, this year is PLA), and attend more of the other conferences, as time allows.

I’m going to give a try at a big genealogy conference in London next month, to bring ShipIndex.org to Europe. Actually, I already have a lot of European (and ANZ) subscribers, which is one reason why I think this will be so good. I’m actively preparing for attending the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE 2012 conference, and it’s certainly adding a bunch of wrinkles.

At the moment, I’m trying to get personal liability insurance for my very modest booth at the show. This is a requirement for exhibiting at WDYTYALive, but I’ve never had to do that before for shows in the US. The trick is that UK insurance agents don’t want to offer coverage because I’m based in the US, and US agents don’t want to offer coverage for the event because it takes place outside the US. I honestly don’t know how this will get resolved, but I guess it’s just one of the challenges associated with going outside your comfort zone.

If you’re in the London area during WDYTYALive, please come visit the ShipIndex.org stand (311). And if you want a free pass to the conference, send me an email – I think I’ll have a few.

The next conference after WDYTYALive will be a library conference, though – the Public Library Association conference in Philadelphia, in March. Then, in May, I’ll attend the National Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati. That should be appropriate; I have family in Cincinnati, as that’s where my dad grew up, and he has nephews and family there. If you’ll attend either of those shows, please let me know, and come by to say hello.

2012: A New Year for ShipIndex

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Categories: Building a Company

2012 will be a new and different year for ShipIndex.org, on many levels. We (I; more on that in a bit) are/am changing the direction in a bunch of different ways. I intend to spend a number of blog posts spelling out what those changes look like, and how they’ll impact the site on its own.

As some background, the original ShipIndex.org started back in 1999, while I (Peter) worked as a reference librarian at the University of Washington. It was strictly a side project and wasn’t even at its own domain for quite a while. Eventually, I moved it to ShipIndex.org, and didn’t bother (alas) to purchase ShipIndex.com while I was at it. I scanned and OCR’d the indexes to several dozen important books in maritime history, and put them on the web. I kept working at it until I had about 100,000 citations online, which I thought was a pretty cool number of citations.

The site wasn’t used much, though I didn’t have a good way of tracking that, such as it was. It wasn’t very Google friendly, so it was hard for anyone to find. Then, more importantly, I started another company with my brothers and a high school friend. As that company took off, I had less and less time to devote to ShipIndex. Some time in 2008 or 2009, after lots of corporate and family changes, I decided I wanted to get back to ShipIndex. After all, the truth is (but don’t tell anyone) I care much more about maritime history than I do about e-journal management. Like I said, don’t tell anyone.

 

In 2009, when I left the other company, I wanted to make ShipIndex much bigger (in terms of its database, really) and turn it into a real company. So I got one brother to help me in creating a much more effective and Google-friendly database with a freemium model that (as of the end of 2011) has nearly 2.3 million citations in the complete database.

Frankly, I’m of two minds about the site right now: I am excited about being able to make maritime history easier to access online. I don’t have any problem charging for access to the premium database, as I believe that, for those who are seeking such information, the work I’ve done in creating this database is incredibly valuable: it saves enormous amounts of time when looking for information on specific ships, and also uncovers paths to previously unknown sources of information. I firmly believe that the small cost for the site uncovers incredible new sources of research, and is well worth it.

On the other hand, growth is slower than I’d like, and uptake among institutions, especially, has been disappointing. I’ve exhibited at many library conferences – an industry I know pretty well – and even at institutions that have maritime programs, and where they say they want to at least trial the product, once we all get home and I contact them, they’re no longer interested.

 

As I said, 2012 will be a new year in many ways. One way will be that I intend to share more information than I have in the past about how I’m trying to grow and improve the company, and the challenges I find I’m facing. This could be a mistake: perhaps some will feel that they don’t want to risk purchasing from a company when they discover that, at this point, there’s really only one person hiding behind the curtain. But perhaps more will recognize what I feel I’m trying to do here, in creating a company that provides a true value to genealogists and historians who want to fill the gaps in their research regarding specific ships.

I guess these entries, like many other things I’ve done so far with ShipIndex, will be an experiment. One great thing about ShipIndex.org so far is that it’s been quite an effective space for trying experiments – I can’t tell you how many different things I’ve tried so far. Some have worked; many others haven’t. I’m doing my best to keep trying different things, tossing out those that don’t work, and keeping (and expanding on) those that do.

I’ll keep you posted, and if you have thoughts or opinions on what’s working and what isn’t, I’d love to hear them, either in the comments below, or in an email to peter(at)shipindex(dot)org.

ShipIndex as a gift

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Looking for a last-minute gift for a maritime historian or a genealogist?

Consider a limited-span subscription to ShipIndex.org!

You can give a genealogist three months of access to the premium database for just $25. Or give a historian access to the premium database for six months for $45. Or give a maritime history fanatic access for a year, for just $85! This is a one-time payment, via PayPal (and yes, you can use a credit card through the PayPal site).

To make it happen, send a note to gifts@shipindex.org. We’ll need the following information:

  • The recipient’s email address
  • When you’d like access to begin, and for how long

We’ll create a pdf certificate that you can print out or email to the recipient. It will include a username and a temporary password, plus information on how to access the database.

This can be a great gift, for any occasion — from a holiday or birthday gift to a retirement or ‘Thank You’ recognition.

On the naming of naval vessels

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The US Navy has not been very good about how or why it names certain naval vessels. Given today’s political environment, it’s no surprise that even the naming of ships has taken on controversial tones with politicians of all stripes looking for reasons to get up in arms.

A story from San Diego describes Congressional dissent over recent naming decisions. It does seem like the Navy would benefit from a significant review of how names are assigned. The Navy would benefit significantly from some standardization in how names are assigned, such as using a certain type of name for a certain type of vessel. Some additional rules, such as not selecting a person until at least, say, ten years after they’ve passed away, would also be valuable. Each action would take a lot of the politics out of the decision-making, I think. The Navy must name its vessels, and this is an opportunity to recognize its illustrious history, and that of the country itself. If the Navy could do something that would reduce the political backlash it receives for its actions, and improve its own profile in the process, it really ought to consider doing it.

It’s a shame that there’s so little standardization in the naming of US naval vessels, and that politicians use these items to make unnecessary political hay, and that nothing will significantly change, regardless of what happens. But we can always hope.

New and updated content

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Lots more new content in the past few weeks. The following resources are new, and include three more Navy Records Society volumes:

In addition, I updated holdings for the following site, which corrected some errors and added lots of new ships:

 

As always, please let me know if you have ideas for content to add. I have enough to keep me busy for the next few years, but I always welcome more suggestions!

More new NRS volumes

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Categories: New Content

I’m plugging away at the Navy Records Society volumes; I’ve added the index to a collection of five volumes today. These are:

So, we’re always getting closer to getting all the NRS content in the database.

Remember that if you see content you’d like me to add, just drop me a line or post a reply here. I’m always interested to hear about new resources to add.