Maine Maritime Buff Creating The International Maritime Library

Written by Clarke Canfield, Associated Press Writer Monday, 15 March 2010 20:54

WINTERPORT, ME (AP).- Boat enthusiast Jon Johansen has set out on an ambitious and exhaustive task: documenting every ship built in the United States. For years, the 56-year-old publisher of the monthly Maine Coastal News has catalogued more than 50,000 vessels — from 20-foot lobster boats to seven-masted schooners to modern-day warships. Eventually, the Winterport, Maine man plans to create a Web site with his gobs of information and call it the International Maritime Library. He says it's his way of helping preserve a part of America's rich maritime past.

He's collected facts about every vessel — their names, when and where they were built, their tonnage and dimensions, and the captains who sailed them. He has scoured libraries, museums, ship registries and old yellowed newspapers and has made audio recordings of some of the old boat builders.

The idea for a dedicated maritime library and research facility was developed by Jon B. Johansen. Yes, this library will hold books and periodicals, but its backbone will be computerized information. This information is based on its collection of books, periodicals, documents, personal papers and photographs.

Initially, a list of all books and periodicals, currently being published and out-of-print, will be developed. Next, the list of periodicals will be prioritized, and from those high-priority periodicals selected, a database will be developed. As funding becomes available other periodicals will be purchased and computerized. The ultimate goal is to purchase and computerize every maritime related periodical published around the world.

A list of books, both non-fiction and fiction, will be purchased as prioritized. At this time, IML has access, for research purposes only, the 7,000 volume maritime library of Johansen. This is a good core collection and will have their indexes computerized.

A vast amount of computerized material, has been loaned to IML. This material includes the “List of Merchant Sailing Vessels, 1867 to 1885” database and hundreds of pages of articles from various coastal newspapers. Examples of the present research are contained in the ‘Research’ section. Most of this material centres around the State of Maine, but will quickly be expanded to encompass material from around the world.

Contributions of books, periodicals, documents, personal papers and photographs are accepted. If you are interested in donating an item or items, please contact us.

There are two major problems facing the success of this endeavour. One is space, which can be cured by the second major issue, funding. With the amount of material, books, periodicals, documents, personal papers and photographs, will take up thousands of square feet, so this means a huge building that is environmentally friendly. Visit : http://www.internationalmaritimelibrary.org/

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