Research Collections

Great Lakes

• Marine Museum of the Great Lakes at Kingston
• Historical Collections of the Great Lakes (formerly the Institute for Great Lakes Research at Bowling Green State University)
• Great Lakes Maritime Database: a collaboration of the Alpena County Public Library and the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary based on the extraordinary collection of C. Patrick Labadie is particularly strong on sail in the Nineteenth century.
• Gerald C. Metzler Great Lakes Vessel Database: The Gerald C. Metzler Great Lakes Vessel Database is a comprehensive index of Great Lakes ships from the 18th and 19th centuries. Compiled from over 50 years of exhaustive research by Gerald Metzler, it is online via the Wisconsin Maritime Museum.
• Milwaukee Public Library Great Lakes Marine collection including data on over 7000 Great Lakes vessels integrated into the library catalog.
  
  
• Great Lakes and Seaway Shipping (aka Boatnerd.com) (including Lighthouses of the Great Lakes) and the modern fleet photo gallery and vessel histories.
• Downward Bound: Help Finding Your Ancestors of Great Lakes Shipping. Part of the international GenWeb project organizing internet-based genealogical information
• Great Lakes Shipwreck Research Brendon Baillod's collection of Great Lakes information including the WMHS Great Lakes Vessel Enrollment database, the accident database and one of the best collections of links
• Dave Swayze's Great Lakes Shipwrecks (and History) page
  
  
• Wisconsin Historical Society Shipwreck Database part of Wisconsin's Maritime Trails
• Naval Marine Archive a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to marine history and conservation, maritime research and nautical education with a number of documents concerning the Great Lakes.
• Great Lakes Maritime History Project from University of Wisconsin's State of Wisconsin Collection
• Father Edward J. Dowling, S.J. Marine Historical Collection Database from University of Detroit Mercy Libraries
• Association for Great Lakes Maritime History leverages the strong collection of links and other resources relating to the lakes from Brendon Baillod's site with online newsletters and discussion forums.

Collections including Great Lakes material

• Robert H. Smith, Maritime Museums of North America Including Canada: includes links to the museum web sites where significant additional content may be found.
• Lighthouse Depot features "Lighthouse Explorer" database and the archives of Lighthouse Digest. Both feature a substantial number of Lakes lights and images rarely seen online elsewhere.

National and Regional Digital collections

• Google Book Search
• HathiTrust Digital Library
• Internet Archive
• American Memory: a strong collection of American material including government documents, manuscripts, travel accounts, periodicals, maps, sound and still and moving images from throughout the history of the United States. Particularly relevant are the images of the Detroit Publishing Company and American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920.
• Making of America: nearly 13,000 books and 50,000 journal articles, some of which are also in the American Memory collection.
• Early Canadiana Online: nearly 80,000 volumes of pre-1900 Canadian printed material with a strong emphasis on government documents, literature, French Canada, women's history and native studies. The post-confederation Canadian government documents are restricted to member institutions but the balance is freely available.
• Library and Archives Canada: includes the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and Shipwreck Investigations (use the database to find individual ships.)
• Images Canada: a partnership of archives, libraries, museums and universities from across Canada

Digitized Newspaper Files

• Chronicling America: digitized newspapers from 1860 to 1920 from around the United States.
• Our Ontario newspapers: an experimental search of selected Ontario newspapers from Kingston to Thunder Bay. Some of the content is pure index, the balance are digitized papers, some from microfilm, some from originals.
• Google News: Google has announced they will not grow this collection but there is a wide range of papers from around the globe including a number of titles from both sides of the border in the Great Lakes region.
• Fulton History: New York State newspapers from New York to Ogdensburg to Buffalo. For a list of the papers see the title list
• Northern New York Library Network: online papers from Oswego to Ogdensburg
• Detroit Free Press Archive, 1831-1922 (pay-per-view) and Chicago Tribune Archive, 1852-1984 (pay-per-view)
• Genealogy Bank: (pay-per-view) includes extensive runs of papers from Cleveland, Sault Ste. Marie, MI, Duluth, Milwaukee and other communities.
• Door County Newspaper Archive: a strong collection of Door County, WI papers, 1862-1941
• Huron County Museum: Digitized Newspapers:  a collection of county papers including those from Goderich, ON

Finding Aids: Museum and archival sites

• Archives Canada: Canadian Archival Information Network
• ARCHEION : Ontario's Archival Information Network
• National Archives (US): including special guides for lighthouse researchers

National maritime services

• NOAA's Historical Map & Chart Project: 21,000 US historical maps and charts up to 2001. An extraordinary collection of large scale online charts.
• U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office: a wide array of historical facts and images relating to the services.
• Thomas E. Appleton, USQUE AD MARE: A History of the Canadian Coast Guard and Marine Services: The official history of the Canadian Coast Guard and related services, including aids to navigation, lighthouses, and search and rescue.

Local Histories (some examples)

• Encyclopedia of Chicago History
• Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
• Toronto Public Library's Local History Collection has a significant collection of online resources
• Digital Kingston: including index to early Kingston newspapers and digital files
• Rock Island Lighthouse
• Chantry Island Lighthouse

Specialized subjects

• Christmas Tree Ship A look at a fascinating chapter in Great Lakes Maritime history: Christmas tree ships, the Schuenemann family, and the town they came from - Algoma, Wisconsin.
• Storm Warning: NOAA's National Weather Service office at Marquette's special feature on the Edmund Fitzgerald storm.
• Terry Pepper's Seeing the Light: Lighthouses of the western Great Lakes
• Naef & Joslin Photographs: Port of Conneaut, Ohio: From the Cleveland Memory Project
• Russel Brothers Ltd.: "Steelcraft" Boat Builders, 1907-93
• Inland Marine Radio History Archive: the history of ship-to-shore communications on North American inland waters, including the Great Lakes.
• Historic Soo Locks Images: 1,731 historic images of the construction of the Soo Locks dating from ca. 1885 to 1941
• Milwaukee Waterways: from the digital collections of the Milwaukee Public Library

Other Maritime collections

• The Maritime History Virtual Archives