Updated Railroads and Ship Registers Guides

The two guides featured in today’s post have something in common – transportation.

You might not think of either as a “business” topic but they are, because both are their own industries and because logistics – the commercial activity of transporting goods to customers – are core parts of the U.S. economy and world trade.

The railroad guide features sources for those looking at the railroads as businesses. Many of the sources deal with company specific sources from the Interstate Commerce Commission, Department of Transportation, and private publishers. It is a guide particularly focused on historical resources, because railroads as business and the industries it supported were big contributors to the U.S. economy. There are also some resources related to safety, maps, and timetables. We also included some trade literature, although there are more titles that were not included.

The guide on ship registers was really created because we have had a fair number of researchers looking for very specific information on ships.  The information they typically look for is who owned a ship when, what was the name(s) of the ship, when was it retrofitted, what was the size, what type of engines did it have, etc., so the sources provided focus mostly on that type of information.  However, there are also items about the history of shipping goods around the world, as well as timetables for passenger ships. Some shipbuilding trade literature was included because it covers shipbuilding as an industry. It publishes articles about orders for ships as well as articles about particular ships and shipbuilding companies and can include information that is not generally part of directory sources.

See our web page for a listing of all of our guides.