Archive
Cultural Record Keepers, Volume 41, number 3
The J. Porter Shaw Library, San Francisco Maritime Museum
Courtesy of The Library of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
What is now the J. Porter Shaw Library started in 1951, housed in a closet under the stairs of the San Francisco Maritime Museum. Fifty-five years later and now part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service), the library is one of the four best libraries of commercial maritime history in the United States and is housed on the top floor of a warehouse that is a National Historic Building.
In 1999, the library added the Donald V. Reardon Maritime Library of rare books and fine bindings. Reardon (1914-2005), a naval architect, collected maritime books for 60 years, using several personal bookplates during that time, including a 9.5-by-7.5-centimeter bookplate bearing a sextant.
Now one of the largest libraries in the National Park Service, the J. Porter Shaw Library contains more than 28,500 titles, 500 periodical titles, and 600 oral histories, in addition to sea charts from the nineteenth century to the present. It provides access to the world's largest collection of photographs of commercial ships under sail and more than 140 albums of sea chanteys. The library also provides access to ship plans, as well as other archival and manuscript materials.
Other bookplates from the J. Porter Shaw Library can be seen on its website.
- Judith Overmier, Professor Emeritus, School of Library & Information Studies, University of Oklahoma
