All posts by Peter McCracken

ShipIndex as bag sponsor at 9th Maritime Heritage Conference

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Categories: Conferences, Talks

I’m excited to report that ShipIndex is a Bronze level sponsor for the upcoming Maritime Heritage Conference in Baltimore, this coming September. We’ll also be sponsoring the conference bags, which is particularly cool. This is the first sponsorship that we’ve undertaken so far, and we hope that it will go well.

A lot of what we need to do right now is get our name out there, so that the appropriate people learn what we’re doing, what our benefits are, and why their institutions should subscribe. (Of course, we also offer individual subscriptions, which are certainly a good thing, too — but they’re not appropriate for institutions, for a variety of reasons.)

So, getting our name (and our very cool logo) in front of several hundred maritime historians should be a very good thing. I’m going to attend, and I’ll spend my time talking with folks, too, about what we offer. We’ll have to see what comes from the event, and decide if it’s worth doing at other conferences in the future. It costs money, obviously, and that’s in reasonably short supply at the moment, but I think that, in the end, it’ll be worth doing. We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.

A friend told me I should have put together a presentation about ShipIndex.org, and he pointed out all sorts of great stuff I could have done — talking about how we’re actually doing it, what problems we’re facing, what the implications are for unique vessel identifiers (especially for ships of a previous era, before IMO numbers and other modern identifiers), how developing identifiers for non-extant vessels could benefit researchers, and more. I wish I’d thought of it in time to submit a proposal, but I didn’t. Alas. But I think it’s actually a very interesting story, and I think that there’s quite a lot one can learn just from analyzing and discussing this very big database we’ve built (and continue to add to), so I hope I’ll find a good opportunity to talk about this some time in the not-too-distant future. If you think of a spot, please let me know.

And, of course, if you’ll be attending the conference, or if you’ll be in Baltimore during it, and you’d like to talk about ShipIndex.org, please tell me. It’s nearly my favorite subject, so I’m always happy to talk about it.

New functionality: Citation counts

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Mike has built a nice new piece of the website that tells you how many citations you’ll find for each entry, and what type of resource you’ll find them in.

If you’re accessing the freely-accessible content, and don’t have a subscription, you’ll see how many citations are in the free database, and how many are in the complete database (ie, both the free and the premium databases). Each listing also shows what types of resources are listed, too. For example, if you’re using the free content, and you search for “Columbus“, you’ll see a message that reads:

The free database contains 112 citations from 40 resources, including 37 books, 2 journals, and 1 online resource, with 1 illustration.

The complete database contains 574 citations from 71 resources, including 51 books, 8 journals, and 12 online resources, with 3 illustrations and 24 passenger or crew lists.

Note that we also indicate how many illustrations and passenger or crew lists you’ll find in each part of the database, as well. This gives you a better feel for what to expect, if you’re trying to decide whether or not you should subscribe.

If you’re searching the premium database, you’ll see an entry like the following:

This ship has 574 citations from 71 resources, including 51 books, 8 journals, and 12 online resources, with 3 illustrations and 24 passenger or crew lists.

Of course, these numbers will change as we add more content.

We hope this will be especially useful for folks who are trying to decide if they should subscribe or not, but they’ll also be quite valuable for subscribers to ensure they’re seeing everything there is to see about their vessel.

Enjoy.

New clients!

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Categories: Institutions

We’ve added several new clients in the past few months, but I’ve forgotten to mention them. These include

  • National Maritime Museum (Greenwich, England)
  • UCLA
  • US Merchant Marine Academy
  • San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park
  • Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA)

Also, we have a number of institutions currently running trials, including:

  • Family History Library (Salt Lake City)
  • Library of Congress
  • US Naval Academy
  • Library of Virginia
  • La Crosse (WI) Public Library
  • Siuslaw (OR) Public Library

If you’re associated with any of these institutions, you should be able to access the complete contents of the site, without any problems at all. If you’re not associated with any of these institutions, you can always ask your local librarians to investigate a subscription to ShipIndex.org, and ask them to set up a free trial.

More New Content

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Categories: New Content

Hi. Long time no blog. Sorry about that. First off, here’s new content added since the last time I posted such a list, about a month ago:

I’ve also re-imported data from two resources in the freely-available section, to update their illustrations indicators. Previously, that hadn’t been correctly represented for a few of the freely-available titles, but I’ve been addressing that. The most important of those is Newell’s McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, which was a particularly tough one to do, but it’s been completed, finally.

I’m also working on a few co-linking projects; I’d like to get more files from other sites online, as I’ve done with IrishShipwrecks.com. I hope to be able to announce something along those lines in the near future.

More information to follow. And, as always, we welcome knowing about titles you think should be added. I’ve got quite a list, but am always ready to add more.

More new content, and a new relationship

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Categories: New Content

I’ve added the following content since the last time I posted a list:

I’d like to highlight a few bits of this. First, I’ve now added an additional 15 years of indexes from Mariner’s Mirror, for a total of 25 years. Mariner’s Mirror is almost certainly the most important journal in maritime history, so it’s great to have that content added here. I will keep working through the remaining indexes, and hope to have them added soon.

Second, I want to point out the content I’ve added from IrishShipwrecks.com. I contacted Mick there, to see if he could provide a file of its content so I could add that to ShipIndex.org, and he did me one better – he created a way for me to get a completely updated file on the content in IrishShipwrecks.com whenever I want.

From the files he automatically generates, I take a lot of information – see, for example, the information for La Surveillante. But remember that he’s got lots more information at his site; this just tells you that you should be checking out what he’s got over there. And if you didn’t know about IrishShipwrecks.com before searching ShipIndex.org, then you’ve found information you didn’t have before!

This is great, and I look forward to more of these relationships. We’re actively working on others, but I’m thrilled that the first one, with IrishShipwrecks.com, is now live. Thanks a ton, Mick!

New feature: Passenger and Crew Lists icons

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Categories: Website Improvements

When we exhibited at the National Genealogical Society conference recently, we quickly learned that lots of genealogists are looking for passenger and crew lists. We knew we had some of them in the ShipIndex.org database, but they weren’t identified. I’m pleased to report that we now have an icon to indicate which citations describe passenger or crew lists.

Mike built the functionality a little while ago, but I hadn’t activated it until today. If you currently have access to the premium database, check out the following searches to see it in action:

  • Admiral Lyons
  • Loreto – results are way down at the bottom; they come from Mystic Seaport’s New London Crew Lists database
  • Lady Amherst – this result is from a database that I just discovered and loaded today, of immigration lists for vessels headed to Australia in the 19th century. It offers links to digitized versions of microfilmed versions of hand-written passenger lists.
  • Acropolis

You do need to be logged in to see these icons, at least at the moment.

Let me know what you think!

Mariners Mirror content added

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Yesterday,  I added content from ten years of indexes to Mariners’ Mirror, the core journal in maritime history. I’ve added the indexes to Volumes 76 to 80, and Volumes 86 to 90.

The index to volumes 86 to 90 include photos, plates, and some illustrations, which I’ve noted here.

I’ll better clarify the years of coverage, and fill in more gaps, in the next few weeks. Many more years of Mariners’ Mirror are on the way, however.

The oldest ships in ShipIndex

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I’ve been to several conferences in the past few weeks. One question that I’m often asked, and one that I imagine people looking at the site are asking, is, “how far back do the ships in the collection go?” The short answer is that the range of vessels currently being added to the database is “any named vessel in a resource in English.” So, an English-language book or website that focuses on German, Italian, Chinese, or Norwegian vessels is definitely of interest, and would be added.

While in Salt Lake City for the National Genealogical Society conference, I was working on one ten-year portion of the index to Mariner’s Mirror, and it included a reference to the wreck of a named Roman ship from the 3rd century BC.

The other night, I was out having a beer with a neighbor, and we were talking about the range of content in ShipIndex.org. I told him that I had recently found a book on the Athenian navy, which I intend to add, and that I was a bit surprised that vessels had names, even back then. Since he’s a Classics professor and expert in ancient Greek and Roman history, he immediately replied, “Oh, yeah – there are many named vessels from that time. One example is the Salaminia, which was the sacred ship of Athens, and no business could be done when it was away from Athens. Socrates was sentenced to death while the Salaminia was out of the port, so his jailers were forced to wait until the Salaminia returned before they could carry out his death sentence.”

Much more information followed, including other references to actions by or related to the Salaminia, from the 5th century BC. That was very interesting to hear, and I’ll soon add the resource on the Athenian navy. I think from now on I’ll see if I can find anything older than the Salaminia. It does give a specific guideline as to how far back content in ShipIndex.org goes, though – pretty far back.

Do you know of earlier named ships? Are they in the database? Let me know, and we can check.

Eight new resources added to premium database

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Categories: New Content

There’s lots of news to post here, and I’ll get to it as quickly as I can. First things first, though: I added content from eight new resources yesterday. Indexes from the following resources are now in the premium database:

The two Silverstone volumes now put indexes from all five volumes of Paul Silverstone’s “US Navy Warship series” in ShipIndex.org. As always, lots more content is always in the works.

Content, Conferences, and Enhancements

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Categories: Conferences, New Content, Website Improvements

Oh, man. I’m so far behind in updating the world on what ShipIndex.org is up to. A few important points:

New content. I uploaded several files today. So far, they’ve included:

The first fills a brief gap; I had already imported volumes 2 and 3, but had had a problem with volume 1, which I’ve since fixed. The last resource, H. T. Lenton’s volume, is a really big, important one. It’s got just over 23,000 citations in it. Many of these are for unnamed vessels, such as Landing Crafts, with names like “LCM.21” or “LCM.234”. I think this is important content for those doing research on these rarely-known vessels. I wrote a lot about the processing I did on this one on the resource’s information page here.

I’m very pleased to get this one imported; it adds immeasurably to the World War II content for those doing in-depth research into naval movements during the war.

With these additions, we’re now just 24 citations short of 1,325,000 citations. Perhaps I’ll find a small set to add some time today.

Past Conference. Two weeks ago (man, time flies!), we went to Salt Lake City for the National Genealogical Society conference. That was a great event, and we had a super time talking with genealogists and learning how we can improve the product we provide for them. We also had a fine time talking with folks from other companies who we can partner with, to the benefit of all involved.

There’s so much to do as a followup on that, and we’re working away on it. That’s a good problem to have, but wow, what a pile of work on our plates. On top of all of that, I’m still working on adding content, and Mike is plugging away at enhancements and new features. Both of us are also working on some neat possible partnerships, plus adding institutional subscribers here and there.

Ship Normalization. Speaking of new enhancements, Mike has built a really valuable new tool that will have a huge impact on a lot of the data that we have from a few major resources. One drawback of projects where a print resource (especially a 19th century one) is digitized and put online is that the print-specific space-saving conventions are applied to an online environment. For example, the schooner Abbot Lawrence is represented in different volumes as “Abbot L’wr’nce”, “Abbott Law’nce”, “Abbott Lawr’nce”, and (obviously) “Abbot Lawrence”. All of them mean describe the same vessel, and in a print volume, that’s easily discerned. But online, the computer doesn’t know that when you search for “Abbott Lawrence,” you’d also like to see the other variations above. That is, unless you have Mike on your side, who has created a tool so that we can bring them all together (that is, ‘normalize’ them). And that’s what we’re doing. The process is quick and accurate, though there are enough entries that it’ll take quite a while.

But, we’re doing it, and we’re making all those other entries available, despite the proliferation of apostrophes.

Next Conference. Finally, I’m headed to a conference at Mystic Seaport tomorrow – it’s a joint conference for a number of organizations, including the Council of American Maritime Museums, the North American Society for Oceanic History, the Steamship Historical Society of America, the National Maritime Historical Society, and the Society for Nautical Research. What a group!

I’m looking forward to telling folks there about ShipIndex.org, and I hope I won’t run out of brochures. If you’re going, and would like to get together at some point, please drop me a line.