How about 1.5 million citations?

Written by:
Published:
Categories: New Content

Oh, did I forget to mention that the premium ShipIndex database now has 1.5 MILLION citations in it? I loaded links to nearly 90,000 ship images into the database last week. And now we have over 1.5 million citations, which is a great milestone in my book. New content is from the following sources:

The current number of citations is 1,513,325 citations. I’m aiming for 1.75 million next…

On the naming of ships

Written by:
Published:
Categories: Uncategorized

On the MARHST-L discussion list, Josh Smith pointed out an interesting piece from GlobalSecurity.org on the naming of US Naval ships.

I agree with the author about the need to stop naming ships after living people, and about the value and importance of using specific terms for specific types of vessels. The author points out how SSN 23, named after Jimmy Carter, has two strikes against it: first, it’s named after a living person, and second, it’s named after a distinguished American, rather than a city or state, as is the case with other submarines. But it’s easy to see why the Navy chose to do that, given Carter’s distinguished history as a submariner. And I imagine the Navy uses the naming of vessels after living people as a way of garnering support from those whose support they need.

There is a value, however, in waiting for several years after a person’s death before naming something after them, and also in maintaining some taxonomic control over the types of names in use.

The site has several other interesting entries related to the naming of USN ships, including this summary overview, and another about USS The Sullivans, which was the first Navy vessel to be named after multiple people. I attended the commissioning of another, the USS John S. McCain, in 1994. (This vessel, DDG-56, was named after the current senator’s father and grandfather, both of whom were four-star Admirals; an earlier John S. McCain was named just for the senator’s grandfather.)

ShipIndex resources regarding the US Civil War

Written by:
Published:
Categories: Maritime History

ShipIndex’s range of content is “any named vessel in a resource in English” – meaning that we list ships from the ancient Athenian navy, from the Middle Ages, from basically every European war and most Asian ones (except for the land wars, I suppose), to 19th century merchant vessels, modern-day freighters, and anything in between. And many of the resources we include – particularly the indexes to journals, such as Mariner’s Mirror, American Neptune, and Nautical Research Journal –cover wide temporal and geographic ranges.

But there are times when it’s good to know how much coverage there is in a specific area, so I thought it would be useful to highlight a few of the resources for various topics. For example, we have a lot of different resources that cover the US Civil War. Here are some titles of particular relevance to US Civil War researchers, which are already included in the ShipIndex database:

I’m working to add Iron Afloat: The Story of the Confederate Armorclads by William N. Still, soon. I’ve also started working on a really big project – the indexes to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies and Navies, and their supplements. (Those will all take a while to complete.) What else should I add, that would further enhance our coverage of the US Civil War?

ShipIndex has grown!

Written by:
Published:
Categories: New Content

The worldwide ShipIndex crew is growing by leaps and bounds. About two weeks ago, we added a new member to our staff, and we’re very excited about this. Kerry O’Malley is our new Manager of Institutional Sales, and in this role he’s responsible for offering ShipIndex.org to institutions of all types: from public and academic libraries to maritime museums, historical societies, and pretty much anyone else who might be interested in offering ShipIndex to a group of people affiliated with an institution of some type.

Kerry comes to us with a perfect background: not only has he worked on a Masters in Maritime History and sold electronic databases to libraries, he also owns and is restoring his own Chesapeake Bay bugeye. His interest in and dedication to maritime history (and all history) will be a huge boon for us, and we’re thrilled he’s decided to join the (now growing) team.

If you think that your library should offer ShipIndex.org to you and your fellow patrons, please tell your librarian – and us! Librarians can set up free trials to ShipIndex.org by exploring the Librarians tab on the ShipIndex.org website.

As a welcome to Kerry, we’re adding contents to two resources that he pointed out to us during the interview process. These are books he felt we needed to add to the database, so of course we did so. They are:

As you can see, they’re titles on a subject near and dear to his heart. If you’ve got other resources you think we need to add, please tell me.

Welcome, Kerry!

Still more new content

Written by:
Published:
Categories: New Content

We’ve added content from the following sources in the past few weeks:

The first entry, the Atlantic Canada CD-ROM, is a very nice, if hard to find, resource. It is a database on CD-ROM, containing tons of information about thousands of vessels, masters, and voyages, in and out of 19th century Atlantic Canada.

As always, there’s lots more to come, and I always welcome your suggestions and recommendations for additional content.

New content added in past few weeks

Written by:
Published:
Categories: Data Correction, New Content

Here’s an overview of the new content added in the past few weeks. Two collections are of particular note: the Lloyd’s List for 1812, via 1812Privateers.org, and the Dyal Ship Collection. One man, Michael Dun, has digitized and indexed all of the issues of Lloyd’s List for the entire year of 1812. It’s quite a feat. He’s indexed all of the ships and all of the masters for that time, adding up to nearly 26,000 ship citations in all the issues of Lloyd’s List for 1812. He kindly shared his index with me, so I could include links to his resources. Mr. Dun hosts the pages on his servers, and they are accessible to all via that site. While working through the index of ship names that he provided to me, I was able to identify a number of corrections, and I incorporated those into the file I imported.

Working through this file was also an interesting reminder about the challenges we face in trying to make the most of these primary sources. Clearly, the folks who were putting together each issue of Lloyd’s List (it usually came out twice a week, and was published in London) were trying to get information out as quickly as possible, and weren’t too concerned with absolute accuracy, to say nothing of how researchers two centuries later would like them to present information.

As a few examples, each of the following slight spelling variations by the editors are likely the same ship: Misletoe, Misseltoe, and Missletoe (there’s no Mistletoe listed in this year of Lloyd’s!). Or, Nymph, Nymphe, and Nymphen. Or Powhatan, Powahattan, and Powhatton. Or Zenophon and Zenophen, when the proper spelling is Xenophon. Or Tinmouth Castle, most  likely meaning Teignmouth Castle. Or simple errors, like Hepsa instead of Hespa.

Of course, if you’re reading this at a London coffee shop one morning in 1812, you can easily look over these minor errors, and figure out what the editors’ intent was. But for researchers two centuries later, who are trying to mine large amounts of data to see what they can find, these errors cause a problem. So how do we address them? That’s an issue for an upcoming blog post. But, needless to say, we at ShipIndex.org have a solution…

Another interesting addition is the Dyal Ship Collection, but for very different reasons. This is a collection of images and data compiled by a researcher (in this case, a librarian) and added to his institution’s “institutional repository” (IR). An IR is a site, usually maintained by an academic library, where content generated by the institution’s faculty, staff, and students is made available for free. It is, in a large sense, a reaction to the high cost of many academic journals, where an institution’s researchers spend time and money doing and compiling research, then pay to have that published in a scholarly journal, then the institution pays to buy the results back, through a subscription to the journal. The whole discussion is beyond the scope of this blog post, but the point is that IRs are places where interesting and useful information can be stored — but it’s most often quite hidden, unless there’s some effective way of indexing the content.

So, with the encouragement and assistance of the compiler, we’ve created links into the collection of files and images that are stored in Texas Tech University’s institutional repository. Recently, we’ve heard from others who have data they’d like us to include, and we’re looking at ways of doing that effectively. This is just one example of that.

Other items we’ve added are mostly more standard print or online collections. The total list is as follows:

If you have maritime content that you’d like to get online, or is online but needs broader publicity, please let us know. We’d love to find a way to help.

Full text links from within ShipIndex

Written by:
Published:
Categories: Books, Website Improvements

ShipIndex.org links to the full-text for nearly 85% of its citations! Before Mike ran the numbers, I guessed that a conservative estimate on links to full text would be at about 70%, so the 85% number was quite a surprise, but it’s true.

How did we do this? First, we’re linking to lots and lots of content online. There are so many free online resources with information about ships out there, and I feel like I find another one every week. But other than ShipIndex, there’s no place that brings all these resources to one place, and no way to search all of them at once. However, with ShipIndex, that’s what you’re doing. But that doesn’t get one to 85%.

Recently, we started looking for resources in Google Books. The next time you’re searching in ShipIndex and you see a hotlinked page number, try clicking on that page number. It should take you right to the page of the book within Google’s Book Search project.

Here are two examples from freely-available resources:

  • The citations for Aroostook, from Paul Calore’s Naval Campaigns of the Civil War, has a link to page 128, and the vessel is mentioned near the start of the last paragraph.
  • The citation for City of Pekin, from Arthur Clark’s The Clipper Ship Era, has a link to page 86, and the ship is mentioned about 2/3 of the way down the page.

This was an interesting experience, and I learned a lot when we did it. The goal was to try and link directly to the page that cited a specific ship. I discovered four different levels of Google Books linking:

  • No content: The book just can’t found, or it’s cited but offers no view into it at all
  • Snippet view: With snippet view, you really do only get just a touch of the book, and it’s hard to know how much or what you’ll get. Most importantly, you can only search by terms, you can’t ask Google to show you all of a specific page.
  • Preview: With preview, Google offers most of the pages of a book. This is common for recently-published works, and Google works with the publisher to figure out what they’ll show. The idea, obviously, is to show enough that someone wants to go out and buy the full book.
  • Full view: For these books, Google shows the entire thing. These are primarily books that are out of copyright protection – so, published before 1923.

We only activate links for books that are available via Full View and Preview — and we only do the Preview if it appears that most links will get to the page in question. We’ve found a few titles that are available in Preview, but so many links go to pages that aren’t visible, perhaps because the publisher only allows 10-20% of the book to be shown via Google Books, that it seems misleading to offer those links.

Links to Snippet views don’t work because there’s no way to get to a specific page. You could try to search for the ship name, but if the ship name is something like “Elizabeth”, then you’ll get every mention of “Elizabeth” in the book – including names of people, not just ships. Also, the searches just don’t work as well. This could be a result of problems in OCR work, too – if the OCR work isn’t very good, then Google won’t find specific phrases, and with the page linking, we’re going to a specific page, not searching for a ship name in the book’s text.

So, as a result, you’ll most likely find linking to Google for very old books (via Full View) and very new books (via Preview).

The horror stories about metadata in Google Books are very true. It’s a mess for any slightly complicated title, such as multi-volume sets. So, finding Navy Records Society volumes — especially multi-volume works that weren’t published consecutively — was sometimes quite a challenge. And, in some cases, volumes that should be available just aren’t. I found one book that was completely upside down. Others have lousy scan quality. But the fact is that an enormous amount of content is available from anyone’s computer now, and it will only improve.

Try it out; see what you think.

From the 9th Maritime Heritage Conference, Baltimore

Written by:
Published:
Categories: Conferences, Ships

I’m writing from the 9th Maritime Heritage Conference, in Baltimore, right now. The Maritime Heritage Conference takes place every three years, and I’ve had the opportunity to attend a few conferences in the past. It’s neat to get reconnected with friends in the maritime history community, and find out what’s been happening in the maritime history community.

Given the subject, we’ve had some great conference receptions on board ships, and I must admit I’ve failed to take advantage of seeing the most of these ships. I certainly attended, and wandered around a bit, but (so far) I didn’t explore the vessels as much as I should have. On Wednesday evening, when I arrived, we had a reception on board the Liberty Ship John W. Brown. The folks running the Brown have done a great job in putting together a walking tour of an incredible amount of the very large ship. The Brown is also nicely represents a specific time – 1944, when it’s getting ready to travel on a convoy across the North Atlantic. The folks working and volunteering on board the Brown have had a lot of history with these ships, and some attendees told me about talking with the volunteers, some of whom began working on these ships when they were operating in convoys, or soon after the War.

Last night’s reception was on board USS Constellation, and again I enjoyed it, but didn’t take advantage of going through all levels of the ship. However, I understand today that I can board any time during the conference, so I hope to get a chance to go again.

Tomorrow morning, there’s a tour of NS Savannah, the first nuclear merchant ship, which is moored in Baltimore while its future is being decided. I hope I’ll be able to participate, though the tour is quite long and I am also giving a talk about ShipIndex.org tomorrow afternoon and need to be sure I’m fully ready to give this presentation.

Tomorrow evening, we’re scheduled to have a reception on board USCG Barque Eagle, which arrived in Baltimore today. It may have done so; I haven’t looked out yet to see if there’s a new set of masts in the Inner Harbor. I feel certain we won’t be able to go below on board Eagle, so I should feel OK about just standing on the deck tomorrow evening!

New feature: tracking ship updates

Written by:
Published:
Categories: New Content, Website Improvements

Here’s the third blog post for the morning. It’s definitely the most exciting. We’ve just released the mostest coolestest feature of ShipIndex since starting the site. (OK, so that’s admittedly my personal opinion, but I think it’s also a fact.)

Effective immediately, anyone with an account (that is, anyone who has created a username – you don’t need to be a subscriber) can be notified whenever a ship page is updated with new information. So, if you’re particularly interested in a vessel named Unanimity, you can go to that page, click on the button near that top that reads “NOTIFY ME when this page is updated”, and then whenever new content is added, you’ll get an email telling you so!

If you’re a subscriber, you’ll see what resource the content is from. You can go to the page directly, and check out the new citation.

If you’re not a subscriber, you’ll be notified that new citations have been added. You may decide it’s finally time to take gain access to everything that’s available on the site. Or, perhaps you use ShipIndex.org through a subscription provided by your local public or academic library. Go to your ship’s page and locate the new citations, which are always marked by a “new” icon for 45 days from the addition of the resource.

You’ll get just one email containing updates for all the ships you’re tracking, not a separate email for each ship, or each citation. Emails are sent in batches, several times per week, reflecting all the data added since the last update.

When you’re done following a vessel, you can just go to the ship page, click on the button that reads “CANCEL NOTIFICATIONS for this ship”, and the emails will stop.

You need to be logged in, so that we can keep track of how to notify you when a page is updated. But, as mentioned above, you DON’T need to be a subscriber. Also, from your profile page, you can see all the vessels you’re tracking, and clear all your notifications, or go to each page and modify them individually.

I truly believe this is an enormous step forward in what we’re offering via ShipIndex.org. You no longer need to come to the site to check on updates regarding the ships that interest you; we’ll take care of that for you. Now, when new citations are added for the ships that matter to you, you’ll be the first to know.

Please try it out, and let us know what you think. Remember: you do need to have an account, but you don’t need to be a subscriber.

I hope you’re as excited about this as I am.

Most commonly used US Navy vessel names

Written by:
Published:
Categories: Uncategorized

I was doing a bit of data cleanup today, and found some moderately interesting items. I was looking at the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, and correcting the way we represented some ship names – specifically those that were used multiple times by the US Navy. In looking over the information we have about US Naval vessel names, I found that there were about 1451 names that were used at least twice; 470 used at least three times; 182 used at least four times; 83 used at least five times; and 30 used at least six times.

Boston, Shark, and all those that follow have each been used seven times; Enterprise, Hornet, Morris, Niagara, and Washington each top out at eight uses. Wasp has been used nine times, and Ranger has been used ten times.

These numbers don’t include ships that already entered with numbers in their name, such as Lexington II; Lexington II entered the Navy with that name and kept it, while each of the five various naval vessels named Lexington all kept the same name, Lexington.

These numbers are most likely pretty close to accurate, though if you spot an anomaly among them, please let me (and other readers) know. I analyzed the names of the vessels listed in DANFS to come up with the numbers, so it’s limited to the vessels included in the current DANFS online at the navy.mil site.