ShipIndex.org

ShipIndex.org is an amazing resource. It began life as the Index to Ships in Books, which was amazing in itself, but its new incarnation is so much more.

It's a gateway to information about vessels. According to Peter McCracken, who was kind enough to write to alert me to the new ShipIndex.org, it tells you what books, journals, databases, CD-Roms, websites, and more, mention particular vessels. There are two levels of access: free to anyone, without cost or registration, are over 140,000 entries, but for under $10.00 per month, one can access the premium database which contains over 1.24 million citations.

When you search for a vessel, the free, full citations are mixed with the brief mention of citations available in the premium database. I like this a lot. I can "see" what I'm "not seeing." And the citations are nicely displayed--when searching: sea foam the citation list was organized by type of vessel and then chronologically--I could scan through the barks, brigs and schooners down to the steam schooner of interest. Links are included into resources such as Worldcat (to find information in libraries) or to ABEbooks to purchase items.

I also like the search interface. Searching sea foam retrieved exactly vessels named Sea Foam. No quotes needed, no retrieved items such as Seaborn Foam. The exactness of the results need to be kept in mind--this is not a library catalog with cross references. If you look for Balclutha, "Balclutha (Museum ship)" is the same vessel as one or more of the "Baclutha (Ship)" entries--and you haven't retrieved anything under "Pacific Queen."

Some periodicals are included--I can't wait for them to get more. And institutional subscriptions are in the works, and will be available in the future--contact Peter if you're interested. The folks behind ShipIndex.org are two of the same folks who founded Serials Solutions, so they are familiar with what libraries and museums are seeking in institutional access--so stay tuned!

I've listed ShipIndex.org in our blog roll, here--their blog is worth reading, especially if you're interested in metadata. (From the blog, you can use the search box on the left to search the database.) The index is also on Twitter and Facebook, which is mentioned on the "Contact Us" page.

I heard on the radio this morning that today was National Have Fun at Work Day, and I wasn't sure how I could make that happen--ShipIndex.org did it. This database is fun.

Popeye cartoons and radio shows

Love him or hate him, one of the most known fictional sailors is Popeye. Starting as a character in the Thimble Theater comic strip in 1929, he later appeared in cartoons, films, books--and on the radio.

The Internet Archive has made many Popeye cartoons available--there is a media type limit available via a pull-down list to the right of the search box on their home page--you'll find "Animation and cartoons" under the "Moving Images" type.

Likewise, you can limit your search to "Audio" to find audio recordings, including six episodes of Popeye the Sailor from their Old Time Radio collection.

And if you want everything they have related to Popeye, leave the limit set to "All Media Types," then use the links on the right of the page to group your results conveniently by Media Type or Collection.

Polar ice, polar bears

Two new programs are available relating to polar regions. The Library of Congress has posted On Thin Ice: Changing Ice Cover on Polar Oceans, a 65 minute lecture by Thorsten Markus, head of the Cryospheric Sciences Branch at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He not only addresses recent findings in the context of global climate, but addresses why the southern and northern regions react differently to climate change.

Focusing on the northern regions, Rose Aguilar converses with Richard Ellis, author of Thin Ice: The Changing World of the Polar Bear on KALW's locally produced Your Call Radio (a one-hour show, broadcast on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010). The show is fascinating, not the least due to Ellis' multifaceted career as a marine conservationist, painter, and author.

History of Nautical Science Symposium

Freshwater, the XVth Symposium and Reunion for the International Committee for the History of Nautical Science will be held in Veszprém, Hungary, September 24 - 26, 2010. The website has the call for papers (deadline March 1, 2010) as well as the preliminary program.

(My thanks to Dr. Zsolt G. Török for sending along the conference information.)

Takara-Bune

According to the Encyclopedia Mythica, on New Years' eve, the treasure ship, the Takara-Bune, will sail into port with the Shichi Fukujin on board. Objects associated with the voyage of these deities occur in many types of collections, and the above image is one of many available at the Wikimedia Commons.

The Hull Museums also have a very informative article, Takarabune and Seven Lucky Gods of Japan, accompanying beautiful, detailed images of their carved group.

Another beautiful image available online is the Bolton Museums and Archive Service's netsuke boat.

Happy New Year!

Christmas on an American warship

(It's the lower image on this reproduction of the New York Tribune--do follow the link to see a larger version.)



From the Library of Congress' photostream on Flickr.

More dazzle

My thanks to Theo Van Doren for bringing Bobolink Book's Dazzle Camouflage site to my attention. The site is by Roy R. Behrens and promotes his new Camoupedia : a compendium of research on art, architecture and camouflage. The site links to many resources (including those previously mentioned on MaritimeCompass), having to do with dazzle camouflage as well as camouflage in general, in the cultural and natural world. If you're interested in exploring the topic, don't miss the link in one of the the little green boxes--it's to a bibliography compiled by Behrens.

And be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page, where you will find little gray numbers--the site continues for four pages. The second page is especially interesting, outlining the steps in designing ship camouflage, and linking to a list of people involved in camouflage. The next pages are of further maritime interest--even the last page, with its discussion of nature, ends up returning to the topic of dazzle.

Thanks again, Theo!

Larry T. Nix on books for sailors

I read about Larry T. Nix's wonderful post, Books for Sailors, in the Nov. 18, 2009 issue of American Libraries Direct. This post appeared on his Library History Bluff blog, and is a wonderful overview of great sources on navy ship's libraries--following the links will take you to thorough resources, rich with footnotes, as well as images from Nix's own postcard collection, and makes for an excellent starting point for investigating libraries for U.S. sailors.

A. Hyatt Verrill

My thanks to Doug Frizzle for writing in about his blog Stillwater Woods, which contains some of A. Hyatt Verrill's works. Verrill wrote on many topics, including those of maritime interest, such as Knots, Splices and Rope Work (available from Project Gutenberg). Further resources on Verrill are listed in the Wikipedia article, including a long list of his works and a link to biographical information.

150 Years of On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published on Thursday 24 November 1859. I'm going to mark this significant anniversary by reading two books:

• On the origin of species : the illustrated edition, recommended in Library Journal's Darwin reading list and edited by David Quammen (published by Serling in 2008, ISBN 978-1-4027-5639-9
  
  
• Richard Dawkins' new book, The greatest show on Earth : the evidence for evolution
  

Today I'm reminded of the impact that just a few voyages can have on our culture--even the impact of just one person aboard just one vessel--and of the rich maritime history that often underlies, and inspires, our other endeavors.

Imperator on Flickr

The Library of Congress has been contributing photos from the George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress) to the Flickr Commons, which include many wonderful photos of the Hamburg America Line's SS Imperator from June 1913, which include close details as well as grand images of the entire vessel.

These photos will no doubt interest many, as the Imperator was later well-known in the English-speaking world when she served as the Cunard's flagship, the RMS Berengaria.

NMM's expanded prints & images sites

My thanks to Douglas McCarthy, Picture Library Manager at NMM in Greenwich, for writing about the expansion and improvement of nmmprints.com--there are now over 14,000 images online in revamped categories and in featured collections.

Check out the "Art of World War II" to find Norman Wilkinson's works, online for the first time ever, as well as works by other artists such as Charles Pears, Eric Ravilious and Richard Eurich. If you'd like a broad overview, select the "Bestsellers" collection for some delightful browsing.

But wait! There's more!

The sister site, nmmimages.com, has new content as well in two new collections, Sons of Sindbad: dhow voyages in Arabia, 1938-39 with the striking photography of Alan Villiers and Caricature & satire, a collection of satirical prints from the 18th and 19th century, which, according to Douglas, parodies "everyone from ordinary seamen to Prime Ministers and the Astronomer Royal!" I really like the long captions that accompany the larger version of an image--they often explain the humor which wasn't readily apparent to me!

So if you're doing research, or even seeking the perfect gift for a maritime enthusiast, do check out these wonderful expanded collections.

L'Espérence

L'Espérence, appartenant à Mr. Vitel. (1862)

Hand colored lithograph from Monographie de l'oeuvre de Bernard Palissy : suivie d'un choix de ses continuateurs ou imitateurs.

Part of the NYPL Digital Gallery, which also participates in the Flickr Commons.

Dreaming the ferry terminal

Claudia La Rocco's article in the New York Times, A reason to miss the boat: dance at the ferry terminal, begins with enchantment:

Ferry terminals are surprisingly dreamy spaces.

Her article reviews a site specific dance piece, "Halt!" by Pavel Zustiak, with such poetry that you feel you are watching the dancers emerge from the crowds at the Whitehall Ferry Terminal. Her writing made me stop and think about the role of the ferry terminal--a portal, a transitional space. She states that Pavel Zustiak often explores the line between private and public space, and what better place to explore that line than the portal between the shore and the water?

Amundsen photo discovered

ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has a great article by Damien Larkins, Rare South Pole Photo Brought to Light. The photo is not just a newly discovered image of Amundsen's 1911 South Pole expedition, but is the only print in the world taken from the original negatives of the event.

What makes the story even more compelling is the process of discovery--through the National Library of Australia's digitization efforts, Harald Ostgaard Lund from the Norwegian National Library (pictured on the ABC News blog entry) was able to make the discovery.

Galilean Nights

Tonight through Saturday (Oct. 22-24, 2009), people around the globe will be looking to the skies to see what Galileo saw. Part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, the focus for the event, Galilean Nights, will be observing what Galileo observed--the beauty of Jupiter, its moons, our moon, and other wonders of the night sky that attracted Galileo's gaze. By seeing what Galileo saw over 400 years ago, this moment of history, when the evidence that the Earth was not the center of the universe, can be relived.

If you've never seen the brilliant jewels seemingly strung on an invisible line that are the moons of Jupiter through even the smallest of telescopes, I strongly encourage you to seek out one of the Galilean Nights events near you or to participate in one of the remote observing events. To look at the planets and stars is one way to understand our position in the universe, and to really grasp that we are poised on top of a big ball around which sailors navigate.

Dazzle camouflage

The Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design has a wonderful online exhibit of Dazzle Camouflage. The images and plans were donated to them by Maurice L. Freedman, a U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation camofleur. The images are wonderful--all the ones I looked at were scans of full plans sheets. According to the site:

Our collection consists of 455 plans (includes port and starboard sides of a ship) and 20 photos. There are 10 types of merchant ships represented with multiple designs for each of those ships.

So the online images are just a taste of the rich resources held by the library.

The site is a little resource intensive, so might not work well at slower connection speeds. Also, the links are not readily apparent--for example, go ahead and click on "What is Dazzle?" as it's as live a link as the "Dazzle Camouflage Blog" or the individual images, even though it doesn't turn your arrow into a hand (at least under Windows, in Firefox & IE).

(As far as I can tell, the Fleet Library was named after FleetBoston Financial Corp., rather than "fleet" in the maritime sense.)

My thanks to MonkeyFist at the Cascobayboaters blog--it was their post that brought this site to my attention.

Semester at sea article

Ever wondered about combining a love of being aboard ships with a love librarianship? Many people do! An excellent article about being a Semester at Sea librarian was published in Virginia Libraries (Apr.-June 2009), Treasures found by seafaring librarians, (.pdf version) by Mary Johnston. (The article is reprinted on ALA's ilovelibraries.org blog.)

The article makes great reading, but also has an extensive list of citations to other articles by Semester at Sea librarians and to resources for those who might be interested in pursuing such a job.

Pirate woman & FictionMags

Originally published in All-Story Weekly, Captain Dingle's The Pirate Woman is now available at Project Gutenberg.

If you're interested in reading more of Aylward Edward Dingle's works, or other works published in the story magazines, check out the wonderful FictionMags Index. Organizing magazines and stories, it's an invaluable resource for locating poetry and serialized fiction in many genres, including maritime adventures, reaching back to the 19th century and covering classic pulp fiction titles. And don't miss the links section if you want to dive in further--they even list dealers.

(My thanks to Dan Krummes for introducing me to FictionMags!)

Mystic Seaport's Image Archive

On Sept. 9, 2009, our very own Kelly announced the new Collections and Research Image Archive on Mystic's excellent News from the Collections blog. I gave it a few days before checking it out--I've found that rushing to a new site on announcement day makes for slow browsing!

I like the layout of the Image Archive very much. Right at the top of the page are phone & email contacts for assistance. I do wonder a little at the title; "Collections" and "Research" images? Don't all the images in the archive come from the collections, and isn't a "research image" any image that you're using for research? (But I split hairs.)

First I followed a suggested browse topic, choosing "Signs and posters." On the next screen, I like the link to switch to a gallery view very much--for casual browsing, this is great. I can't tell you much more about gallery view, however, because even though I'm on a rather high speed connection, only 25 thumbnails loaded, with what are apparently catalog numbers interspersed among the images like so:

2004.83.1 2004.83.10 2004.83.100 2004.83.101 2004.83.102 2004.83.103 2004.83.104 2004.83.105 2004.83.106 2004.83.107 2004.83.108 2004.83.109 2004.83.11 2004.83.110 2004.83.111 2004.83.112 2004.83.113 2004.83.114 2004.83.115 2004.83.116 2004.83.117 2004.83.118 2004.83.119 2004.83.12 2004.83.120 2004.83.13 2004.83.14 2004.83.15 2004.83.16 2004.83.17 2004.83.18 2004.83.19 2004.83.2 2004.83.20 2004.83.21 2004.83.22 2004.83.23 2004.83.24 2004.83.25 2004.83.26 2004.83.27 2004.83.28 2004.83.29 2004.83.30 2004.83.31

No amount of reloading would correct the problem (at least for me today with Firefox). I suspect that you wouldn't have this problem if you waited for the previous page (non-gallery view) with the columnar display to fully load, but who waits for pages to fully load when you're interested in clicking away?

I backed up to try another category--"Bicycles?!?" Yes--a maritime museum with images of bicycles! And much, much more. The images are all extremely well cataloged with extensive descriptions. The descriptions are so thorough, that you may wish to use the "find" feature in your browser to zero in on keywords for which you were searching or browsing.

The search interface is a bit tricky, however.
This search retrieved images: "charles w. morgan"
But this search retrieved nothing: charles AND morgan
And this search retrieved yet another image not seen in the first search: charles morgan
There's no "advanced search" or search help available that I could find, so play around with the searches.

Finally, if the Mystic Seaport logo on the upper link were actually a link to Mystic's homepage, that would be lovely--if the Image Archive were my entryway to their site, as it was today, I'd like their main page to be just a click away.