Reference Extract

I'm watching Planning Reference Extract with interest. According to their site:

Reference Extract is envisioned as a web search engine, like Google, Yahoo and MSN. However, unlike other search engines, Reference Extracts will be built for maximum credibility by relying on the expertise and credibility judgments of librarians from around the globe. Users will enter a search term and get results weighted towards sites most often referred to by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress, the University of Washington, the State of Maryland, and over 1,400 libraries worldwide.

I wonder how it will differ from one of my favorite sites, The Librarian's Index to the Internet, which describes itself as:

Librarians' Internet Index (LII) is a publicly-funded website and weekly newsletter serving California, the nation, and the world...You can also search and browse our website for the best of the Web. We have over 20,000 entries, also maintained by our librarians and organized into 14 main topics and nearly 300 related topics.

Librarians building a searchable resource of credible sites. Such a good idea that LII began doing it in 1990 as a Gopher bookmark file. (Remember Gopher?) In the current climate, they keep going, despite budget cuts. I wonder now what the future of this valuable, almost 20-year-old resource will be?

nmmimages.com

The new Picture Library website from the National Maritime Museum (Greenwich) makes it much easier to find their images from remote locations than it used to be--some images, if you have a fast internet connection. The home page will load a horizontally scrolling row of images without the option to skip it, so if you have a slow connection, you may want to go directly to the subject & category search page or to featured collections. (I accessed the site on a fairly fast network, and grew impatient waiting for the home page to load through the course of my searching.) The site has a useful FAQ broadly outlining policies, but doesn't address what is on this site in comparison to the digital collections previously made available over the web and currently made available on other sites.

Browsing, I saw lovely photographs, objects, paintings--a wide range of items that have been imaged. When I went to the search page, however, and entered this search in the caption search box: "cat head"
my search retrieved one image, a portrait of Captain Sir Charles Hamilton. Apparently, this text is responsible for responding to my phrase search:

This half-length portrait in kit-cat format shows the sitter with his head turned to the right.

Since the FAQ doesn't include advice on constructing search terms, I'm inferring that they don't offer phrase searching. I then tried various terms and variations. I was hoping to find images that I had found through their website before, e.g., "PAD8643 Gaff, Cat Head, Driver Boom, Bow Sprit," a watercolor--but I didn't find it on nmmimages.

It is a great website. On a fast connection, it's easy to navigate, and if you see something you like, there is a link at the bottom directly to their print sales. But I'm not sure how useful the site is for the serious researcher--there are clearly more images available on the main NMM website, but how many more? We don't know. And images that are on the NMM Flickr site are also not appearing on nmmimages (when I looked).

The casual user, or pleasure browser, might enjoy nmmimages, but the casual user might discover more NMM images through a Google Images search by including the phrase "national maritime museum"--I know I did.

Restrained

Ryan Harper has posted a beautiful photo of his on website, Ryanharperphotography.com,, in the blog entry entitled Restrained. He took this lovely photo of chains at SF Maritime NHP (TIA: where I work), and it won first place at the Wasatch Camera Club's advanced open division.

200 Jobs

On January 6, 2009, the Wall Street Journal published, Doing the Math to Find the Good Jobs: Mathematicians Land Top Spot in New Ranking of Best and Worst Occupations in the U.S. (I read about this on gCaptain's excellent weekly review, Maritime Monday.)

Interestingly, librarian appears as no. 43 of the top 200 jobs, beat out by Historian at no. 7. Museum Curator? Down at no. 66. Bookbinder appears at no. 83, and Photographic Process Worker at no. 90. (Are you still doing analog photographic reproduction at your museum?) Author? No. 93, but ahead of Photographer at no. 125, and Recreation Worker at no. 131.

As for the maritime trades, Stevedore makes an appearance at no. 175, and Seaman at no. 197. The criteria that go in to the ratings include: work environment, physical demands, stress, income, and hours per week. Of course, the intangibles are omitted. I don't think they asked people in the professions if they loved what they do.

Your Call Radio

Another favorite radio program of mine is KALW's locally-produced Your Call Radio. Several recent programs address issues of interest to the maritime and the museum world, and are a pleasure to listen to. The hosts are skilled at fostering interesting discussions while ensuring that the experts share background information necessary to understanding the issues. It's a live, call-in show, but, again, the hosts consistently foster an environment of civil discussion. If you like the shows below, consider tuning in--and participating. (A live stream is available via KALW's Listen Live page, and the show is broadcast Monday through Friday between 11:00 AM and noon, Pacific Time.

• Commons: Who owns human cultural heritage? Guests: McGuire Gibson, Professor in the Oriental Institute and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at University of Chicago, and
  Sharon Waxman, journalist and author of Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World.
  
• What can we learn from the transformation of our oceans? Guest: Sylvia Earle, named a living legend by the Library of Congress, Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, and author of Ocean: An Illustrated Atlas.
  
• Global commons--Whales & sharks. Guests: Guests: David McGuire, conservation filmmaker, a field associate of the California Academy of Sciences and a shark advocate; Douglas Long, Chief Curator, Natural Sciences at Oakland Museum of California and formerly chair of the Department of Ornithology and Mammalogy at the California Academy of Sciences, currently teaching in the Department of Biology at Saint Mary's College in Moraga; and, Stan Minasian, a naturalist with the Oceanic Society.
  

What Lies Beneath

The BBC's documentary series, The Changing World, aired another excellent program, What Lies Beneath. I heard it via my local NPR station, KALW (of which I'm an enthusiastic member) and the program was so good that I listened to it a second time.

Win Scutt, an archaeologist and broadcaster, is engaging and educational. This program is a must for anyone with any interest in underwater archaeology, and would even be interesting to land-archaeologists, as Scutt addresses the issues of the shifting shore over time. In many places, what was once land is now underwater, and the frontiers of many archaeological fields lie submerged.

For those intimately involved with the field, and confronting the current issues of law, ethics, and unprecedented access to sites due to advances in technology, it would also be worth a listen--this documentary brings these issues into the mainstream media and might well influence how they are discussed in the future.

Lecture: Balclutha in the movies

The Friends of the San Francisco Maritime Museum Library send along this lecture announcement:

Balclutha in the Movies
Saturday, January 10, 2009, 6:00 p.m. In the Maritime Library, Building E, Fort Mason Center. Donation:$5($4 Library Friends and SFMNPA) Reservations: 415-561-7040 or melani_van_petten@partner.nps.gov

Park Ranger Debbie Grace will briefly tell the story of Balcutha’s movie career, including Mutiny on the Bounty, with Clark Gable. Her introduction will be followed by a showing of Souls At Sea, a rousing story of the slave trade in the 1850’s. The movie stars the Star of Finland as the William Brown, and includes the Star of Alaska (ex-Balclutha) in a supporting role. Gary Cooper and George Raft are also featured.

TIA: This is the library where I work.

Nautical paper plates of yesteryear

"Paper plate ad, couple at dock," from George Eastman House's Flickr photostream.

More information on the George Eastman House photography collection is available at their website.

Sea Eagles

They may be re-introduced to England, according to a recent article in ScienceDaily. The decision is still pending, but should be made in 2009.

Should the cry of the sea eagles be heard again over England's cliffs, the words of the poet of The Seafarer will come to life:
Storms there beat the stony cliffs,
where the tern spoke,
icy-feathered;
always the eagle cried at it,
dewy-feathered;
no cheerful kinsmen
can comfort
the poor soul.

Archaeoastronomy

The Library of Congress has posted a new Tracer Bullet (a "pathfinder," for all you librarians out there) on Archaeoastronomy. It's a fascinating discipline, involving history, archeology, anthropology, etc. From the Tracer Bullet:

Archaeoastronomy is the interdisciplinary study of prehistoric, ancient, and traditional astronomies within their cultural context. Its sources include both written and archaeological remains and it embraces calendrics, practical observation, sky lore, celestial myth, and more. Its true scope establishes it as an "anthropology of astronomy."

How does this relate to maritime history? Well, the only photo included is The Antikythera Mechanism, discovered on a sunken Greek ship.

Cruise Travel & Popular Science

When I heard that Google Book Search was adding magazines, I was very happy to find Thomas Gruber's list of titles. Of particular interest to the maritime world:

• Cruise Travel Magazine: Currently, there are issues from 1970 on.
  
• Popular Science Monthly: Currently, there are issues from 1870 on. Check out the article by Harry Fielding Reid from Jan. 1910, "How could an explorer find the pole?" or the articles on the centenary of Darwin's birth that speculate on his place in future biology in the same issue.
  

Searching is via the usual Google Books interface, books.google.com, and when you retrieve a magazine article, the screen will often say things like, "Read this book." There is searching help available just for the magazines, which says:

Once you've found a magazine that interests you, you can browse other issues of that magazine from the "About this magazine" page. Click on the "About this magazine" link at the top left of the screen, and scroll down to the section marked "Browse all issues." You can then explore different issues of the magazine by clicking on a decade that interests you, and then scrolling through the individual issues from that time.

However I didn't find the "Browse all issues" displayed consistently--perhaps Google's not sure which "books" are "magazines."

The Naval History Society Collection, 1721-1995

Celia Hartmann, Project Archivist, Naval History Society Collection at the New-York Historical Society has sent along exciting news:

The New-York Historical Society has made available the finding aid for its newly processed Naval History Society Collection. You can find it at http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/NHSColl.html
where it is fully searchable.

The Collection consists of 53 individual collections, many named for renowned naval officers or vessels. These include correspondence, letterbooks, journals and diaries, lectures, essays, account books, biographical writings, genealogical information, scrapbooks, orders, notes, articles and clippings, photographs, manuscripts, and ships' logs, as well as the organizational records and correspondence of the Naval History Society itself.

The majority of the collections document American naval engagements and commercial maritime pursuits, personalities, and vessels; a few collections of British and French documents are included. The Collection as a whole provides primary sources on American naval involvement in hostilities from the American Revolution to the Spanish American War, as well as routine commercial and naval shipboard life, naval design, navigation, education and officer training. The Society's records document the founding, management, and activities of a collecting and publishing organization in the first third of the 20th century.

Processing of the Collection was made possible by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

The finding aid is a thing of beauty; easy to navigate, each of the series is linked to the relevant container list. Related material is covered, and under "Access restrictions," it's noted that microfilms of portions of the collection are available via interlibrary loan! The access points are easily browsed, and also hyperlinked, covering names, subjects, and even document types.

The only item that seems missing in the finding aid is a link for further information, so researchers take note: Celia will be there to answer questions until the end of the month. After that, contact the reference staff at the New York Historical Society. (If their website is unavailable, try phoning 212-873-3400.)

ETA: The finding aid now has a link for further information: select List of Finding Aids to see more finding aids, a link to the institution's home, etc. (Feb. 25, 2009)

Old magazine articles

Our friends at the Casco Bay Boaters Blog have sent along a fantastic link to the OldMagazineArticles.com. There is a lot there of maritime interest; the browse list on the home page includes links to Titanic articles and U.S. Navy uniform articles. You can also search by keywords, and the resulting list of articles includes long summaries that make it easy to select a pertinent resource. The articles I viewed were all Adobe Acrobat .pdf files, preserving the look of the original hardcopy, and many had links to relevant film clips.

The site is also good for popular coverage of related topics: business, arts, world affairs, etc. It's not a comprehensive collection, but a very nice selection.

Limelight on research for historical fiction

Julian Stockwin's article, Using the Internet in writing historical fiction has some great websites of interest to maritime authors and researchers. A feature of Limelight from Intute: Arts & Humanities, the article lists resources not only of use in maritime history research, but some leads for aspiring authors on such topics as how to submit a manuscript to a literary agent.

And if you haven't explored Intute: Arts & Humanities, set aside some time to head over there. It's amazingly well-organized and easy to use, and includes fascinating blog. (Don't miss the recent entry on Intute's hosting of the Port database.)

Thanksgiving at sea

The Science Buzz site from the Science Museum of Minnesota has an article about a fun Thanksgiving at sea. Dinner was made for 114 people from a dozen different countries, and the table was festive with food sculptures and fruit statues.

Maritime art at Christie's

On Dec. 3, Christie's will hold a maritime art auction in New York. (Sale no. 2067.)

Even if you're not in the market to buy a painting, do check out their auction site. You can limit the list of artworks by many factors including medium, artist, origin, and date. And clicking on a thumbnail of the work brings up a detailed page that allows you to "Enlarge & zoom" in on the image--the images load quickly and once zoomed, are easily panned for detailed examination.

You can also explore further by entering "maritime" into their keyword search box; it will retrieve all the items in this auction, plus maritime-themed items from other sales.

Straddling the world of the written word

Joan Druett, author of eighteen wonderful books, has a delightful blog, Straddling the world of the written word (now appearing in our blog list). Many of the posts deal with things maritime, but she also discusses the broader world of books, libraries, and publishing.

And don't miss the whisperings from Spy Mouse!

Casco Bay Boaters

There's a new blog in our resources list, Casco Bay Boaters. It's a great resource, even for those not boating in Casco Bay--the links under the "Charts" and "Weather & Tides" tabs are excellent. (There are even links about the phases of the moon.) There are also interesting original posts on many maritime topics, as well as highlights from other blogs, on everything having to do with the sea.

Alexander Selkirk & Robinson Crusoe

The recent news about the evidence of Alexander Silkirk's campsite on the island of Aguas Buenas (renamed Robinson Crusoe Island) reignited my interest in the debate over his connection to Defoe's character Robinson Crusoe. A CUNY website, Alexander Selkirk, has a thorough discussion of Selkirk in the context of other readings on castaways, and links to the BBC's excellent article on Selkirk and his possible connection to Crusoe.

Although this site hasn't been updated since 2002, it was developed as part of a course in the 18th century English novel that has lots of great resources and reading lists. Even the paper topics are still there--check them out if you're looking for suggested ways to approach the book.

Harvard opts out

There has been a lot of coverage and analysis of the recent Google Books settlement with publishers and authors, but it's finally had an impact on the maritime world: see Jennifer Howard's article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Harvard Says No Thanks to Google Deal for Scanning In-Copyright Works." Harvard's libraries contain a wealth of material on business, including the shipping industry, and their reasons for opting out include concerns over prices and quality. I believe this is very good news, as they are committed to exploring "other ways to open up its collections more broadly for the common good."

I read about this on the Open Content Alliance blog--the folks behind the Open Library catalog and the Internet Archive. These are becoming essential resources. If you're interested in digital books, start with the Open Library--it's an easy-to-use catalog that includes the over 1 million digital books at the Internet Archive. (You can limit your search to "scanned books only" right under the home page's search box.) If you're interested in other formats (audio, video, etc.), head directly to the Internet Archive, which also includes the WayBack Machine. If something you're interested in has disappeared from the web, chances are you can find it archived in the WayBack Machine.

Google Books is still a useful tool; it still functions as a multiple text index and includes many books still under copyright which, if you're lucky, show the snippet view of the passage that interests you. But I start with the Open Library and the Internet Archive; they present each book in multiple formats, and soon will release the next version of their online flip-book reader (which I was lucky enough to see last week, and which is a pleasure to use).