Where to order HAMMS plans?

[regex]

With the Smithsonian closed due to US government shutdown, are there any other sources to order plansets from the The Historic American Merchant Marine Survey? Preferably physical copies?

 

[DAWarden-(Jaager)]

Regex,

As a proposition with no evidence to support it:
HAMMS was a US government project. The plans' intellectual rights belong to the US government. Unless The Smithsonian Institution has licensed a third party as a sales agent, anyone else selling those plans is infringing a copyright. I doubt that any legit alternatives to the S.I. exist.

To kibitz:

I remember when HAMMS plans were offered for sale. I was tempted. It was a crate of bound folios. It was expensive. It is also outside my focus era. Separating the plans from the binding would be burning money. Unless going crazy and buying a large number of plans - it is more economical to pay The S.I. $10 + shipping for each desired sheet and pay Office Depot the $5 per sheet to scan and save the PDF to your USB stick. With the way I work, there is no part of any plan that I would work as an individual component that is too large to print out on my Ecotank.

The present S.I. process brings to mind: obtuse, passive aggressive. Then again, should S.I. scan their archive of plans to PDF/TIFF and offer direct downloads on-line, it would make too easy for pirates and short sighted morons to destroy their income stream.

I hope S.I. has done scans and has them stored off site. Otherwise, if what John Saxon said: "There was a fire." does occur the loss would be beyond imagining.

 

[regex]

it is more economical to pay The S.I. $10 + shipping for each desired sheet

Something I would be happy to do were they actually open.

The present S.I. process brings to mind: obtuse, passive aggressive.

Yes, an online ordering process (with previews) instead of the whole "send a check for a catalog then send a check with your order" '80's-era rigamarole would be welcome.

 

[fred.hocker]

Interesting to read! I wrote the SI plan catalogue in the summer of 1984 when I was an intern (the one they are still using), and remember clearly going through the HAMMS plans as part of the larger collection. I also collated the photo collection against the plans, so you could order photos as well as plans, all by writing everything out on legal pads and then typing it up. Ah, the good old days.

I am surprised that there has not been a digitization project on the collection, just as a preservation measure. A lot of the older drawings in the collection were already in a fragile state 40 years ago.

Fred

 

[Roger Pellett]

Fred, somebody, I don’t remember who, published the HAMMS drawings in a series of large format books. I think in the 1980’s. Archival collections sometimes include the relevant volumes in their collections. For example, a nearby branch of the University of Wisconsin, includes the volume(s) pertaining to Great Lakes Vessels in their archives. Fortunately, anyone can visit and look at them.

Not ideal, but a way of preserving them.

Roger

 

[fred.hocker]

Yes, I remember that series of seven volumes, a magnificent, gorgeous production, edited by Melvin Jackson. One of the reasons I was engaged to write a new catalogue of SI's plan collection in 1984 was to make the HAMMS plans individually accessible to people who did not want to pay the hundreds of dollars that publication cost then. Jackson's books had just come out and people were already screaming about the price (although if I have not been a poor student intern, I would happily have paid it).

My memory is that SI held blueprint copies of the original HAMMS drawings, not the drawings themselves, and I also have a memory that there were some small gaps in coverage. I suspect the original drawings are in the National Archives, since they were a product of a depression-era government project under the WPA or something similar.

It may be that making the Jackson books available as PDFs is a more likely avenue to wider distribution, since they should be out of copyright by now. SI's maritime curator has just retired and it is not clear if he will be replaced, so waiting for SI to do something about this seems too leaky a vessel into which one could place much hope.

Fred

 

[Roger Pellett]

Fred,

I have posted this here on SOS but in case you modded it, SI has “deassessed” the files that Chapelle is Ed to write his boos and to draw his plans. They are now in Texas A&M’s archives. While Texas A&M has an impressive Nautical Archaeology program, it is my opinion that the files should either have been kept by the SI or placed in the National Archives. Sounds like they have deassessed the maritime curator job too.

Roger

 

[fred.hocker]

I was not aware that they had done that, although knowing the curator, who was a maritime archaeologist, it is not surprising. I suspect that the papers went into the TAMU library's special collections, which includes one of the most impressive assemblies of early works on naval architecture in the US. Still a bit of an odd choice in terms of accessibility.

Given SI's other current challenges, I suspect the maritime curator post will not be filled any time soon, even if it is not officially eliminated.

Fred