Shipindex.org

04 Mar 2010

Shipindex.org is an online resource that gives references to ships in books, magazines and other websites. It's been around for a few years so you may have come across it before, but what you may not know is that it's recently entered a new development phase and is looking more and more useful to maritime researchers.

What it provides is something that everyone wants - the ability to put the name of a ship into a database, and find out where to find information on it. Ideally that information would come straight back out of the database (and maybe it will one day, if Google have their way with copyright), but as you will know if you've spent time here at the Caird Library, typically the information likes to hide. In books. So being able to find out which books it's hiding in really is the next best thing.

Shipindex now has 143,937 entries free to view, with an additional 1,278,431 entries available as premium content, accessible by subscription. We are currently running a trial of the premium content, so if you'd like to try it out, come and visit us here at the Library or E-Library sometime before March 17. We'd love to know what you think, and I'm sure the people behind Shipindex would too.

Renee (Digital Resources Librarian)