Co-operative development of research resources

(new 17 May 2006)

With tools already on almost everybody's computer already there is considerable potential for co-operative efforts by individuals or small teams to build personally manageable parts of larger research resources or simply small modules designed to be able to be combined with others if desired.

It isn’t necessarily essential for everything to be completed before anything is useful – a research resource for your local port is still useful whether or not someone else does California. Components will still be useful to you, your group, your local library and the local maritime museum whether or not you can or wish to share them with anybody else but by following a few simple guidelines you can hold open the option of future sharing and amalgamation for mutual benefit, a few or many years down the track. Several English individuals and groups have done things of this type with historical British shipping records with potential for linking to other people’s work. I’ll add a list to my site in due course.

Containerising cargo and combining containers into shiploads is one way to visualise it. Physical containers, of course, are designed and built from scratch to interlock to fine degrees of tolerance. We can be much more flexible with information and datasets provided there are common vessel identifiers and standards. I’ll elaborate principles and suggest some common terms in a future addition to my site (write if you need it sooner).

No-one need ever do more than fill or part fill one “container” within their personal limits with “cargo” of particular interest to them. Provided each item in the "container" has common referencing (such as official number or other common alternative) the contents can be combined with the contents of the other “containers” at the “delivery port” or “transhipment point” and anyone can do the combining. I have some pertinent experience and “bright ideas” but you don't especially need me. It isn't lifetimes'-work encyclopaedias that are required but strategies, (information) maps, signposts, collaboration and co-operation and something more useful than an encyclopaedia will write itself. What I've outlined in various items on my site and in the stock take of my American research is potentially part of the strategies, maps and signposts. Collaborate with me, build on it independently, develop your own, go to it any way that suits.

“Linkability” is the key. If it's inter-connectible, it can serve multiple additional objectives including those yet to be imagined. With a growing number of “containers” available and their “cargo manifests” indexed, unnecessary duplication of effort can be minimised and effort focussed instead on what hasn’t been covered yet and on completing “containers” of particular strategic significance for achieving common goals.

Collective genie-us. What we can learn from the genealogists

NB: “Genies” is colloquial Aussie for genealogists (like “Aussie” itself, “tinnies” for small aluminium dinghies, “rellies” for relatives and “cossies” [costumes] for what the attractive young lady is wearing in the Aussie tourist promotion whose language, not cossie, so perturbed the BBC.)

Genealogical researchers, who outnumber maritime historians by 100's to one, have the collective development of common research resources down to a pretty fine art within their fields and have moved veritable mountains through co-operative effort. A substantial minority are tracking maritime ancestors or immigrant ships. We only need to appeal to and influence a fraction of them in the overlap area in order to at least double the effective maritime history effort without taking anything away from them. There may be untapped resources here. I once actually heard someone lament before a meeting of 60 people that she had researched her parents’ and husband’s parents’ families back to the 16^th century and then for good measure done her brother-in-law’s as well and didn’t know what to do any more!

In NZ there are going on 10,000 genealogists and family historians compared with around 500 old type “shiplovers”. Those figures aren’t very precise but it’s of that order of magnitude. However, all the “genies”, of necessity, develop a working knowledge of primary and secondary information sources and the use of computerised records and many are contributing to the development of new research resources or the revision of old ones. The same is true of only a small proportion of “shiplovers” actively involved in researching books (including books of the type you never actually publish) so 100’s to 1 rather than 20 to 1 is about right. There’s nothing wrong with what the other shiplovers do but it is a different type of involvement. What the genies and active maritime researchers do is simply essential for some purposes and types of interest. The ratio is much the same elsewhere as far as I can gather, at least in the main traditional English-speaking nations.

What the genealogists have accomplished is a testament to the power of committed co-operative effort. Maritime historians share and co-operate of course, sometimes very greatly indeed at a personal level, but tend to be loners compared with the genealogists.

NZ genealogists have indexed great swathes of birth, death and marriage indexes, burial and cemetery records and an incredible proportion of all school admission records, amongst others (the school records in just the space of a few years through regionally organised teams). Just a subgroup of one Auckland branch transcribed substantial registers of all NZ troops involved in WWI and issued them on CD. A wider team is ploughing through the indexation of probate records. There’s transcription of all sorts of things going on all over the place. I’m always hearing of new examples. Archives and libraries have come to depend on and assume the genealogists’ indexing contribution and do not even dream of having the resources to themselves do indexation that is technically their responsibility. Annual conferences are planned two years in advance, attract overseas speakers and several hundred delegates to three days of up to four or five parallel conference sessions, workshops and associated events. The conference papers of course are pre-published. At last count, substantial published family histories were pouring into the national library at the rate of at least one per week.

That’s just NZ alone. I couldn’t say whether genealogy is more alive and well in NZ than in Australia, Canada, Britain, the US and elsewhere but the internet is full of prolific evidence that others are well and truly in the running. Clearly, genealogists have accomplished “critical mass” that maritime history does not display to the same degree. Thanks to their numbers, genealogy provides plentiful social opportunities that reinforce their interest, effectiveness and accomplishments. The “Protestant work ethic” is alive and well in maritime history. Genealogists actually have fun. If you want to get fully involved with the monthly branch evening lectures, monthly branch morning lectures, monthly regional computer group and Scottish and Irish groups, rostered turns at the branch library and the local transcription projects - before you even do anything towards your personal research contacts and the international projects - then joining the local genealogical society branch can be a bit like joining a church.

A fraction of the collective spirit, energy and “genie-us” of the genealogists could revolutionise the development of maritime history research resources. The particularly good news is that there is a significant area of overlap between genealogists and maritime historians with scope for genuine two-way exchange. It’s not a matter of tricking the genealogists (who aren’t stupid) into somehow doing “our” work for us but of combining forces in projects that span both interest groups and communicating to genealogists how they can “tweak” the projects they are doing or going to do anyway so that they can better connect with more specialised maritime records, for their as well as our benefit.

Developing the contact points with genealogists can only be good for both them and us. For extension of this discussion see Collaboration with genies

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