The following is an interview with Jon Eaker, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division, about the subject of his research guide: Ships: Navigating for Images at the Library of Congress.
Melissa: What is the most challenging thing about finding images related to ships in the collections?
Jon: When searching the digitized collections in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, the most difficult thing is that we often copied the image’s title as it appeared on the item and many didn’t include a ship’s prefix (SS, USS, HMS, etc). For some ships with unique names it’s not much of a problem, but for ones with more generic names it can be an issue. A ship named America (of which there have been many) will get lost amongst all of the other records which say America somewhere in the record. In some cases adding the word “ship” to the search may narrow your results down, as might using other types of ships like steamboat, battleship, yacht, etc. It can help to know which collections are more likely to have ships.
Melissa: What collections particularly stand out as being strong in their coverage of ships?
Jon: For photos of early to mid-20th century ship