Empire State VI Records, 1990-2012

Collection — Multiple Containers

Identifier: CA-RG1-0009

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The Empire State VI was used by SUNY Maritime College as its training ship from 1990 to today. The ship was used to train cadets for their careers in the Merchant Marines and the Naval Reserves. This collection also contains administrative documents, cruise itineraries, correspondence, news articles and "Plan of the Day".

Dates

1990 - 2012

Creator

State University of New York Maritime College (Organization)

Language of Materials

All materials are in English except for one newspaper entirely in Spanish.

Conditions Governing Access

Appointments to examine materials must be made in advance. Please e-mail library@sunymaritime.edu for more information or to schedule an appointment.

Conditions Governing Use

Reproductions may be provided to users to support research and scholarship. However, collection use is subject to all copyright laws. The responsibility to secure copyright permission rests with the patron.

Historical Note

The U.S.S. Empire State VI replaced the U.S.S. Empire State V in 1988. Rear Admairl Flyod Harry Miller made the case for a new training ship as the current training ship needed an estimate of $42 million in repairs. Miller lobbyed in Washington and encouraged parents of Maritime students to do the same by providing addresses and phone numbers of their representatives. Democrate Representative Mario Biaggi and Republican Senator Aphonse D'Amato were two main congressional allies of the college and supporters of financing the new training ship. Alumni Rudy Cassini (class of 1946) was a staff member of Biaggi, and was instrumental in securing the $8.5 million to puchase the Mormactide, a C-4 steam freighter to be converted into a training ship for the college. On May 5, 1990, D'Amato's mother re-christened teh ship to the Empire State VI.

Extent

0.8 Linear Feet (4 standard archival document cases)

Additional Description

Overview

Arrangement

Materials are arranged in alphabetical order.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

These materials were collected from the ship’s librarian. Unfortunately, deeds of gift or transfer documentation has not been located for most of the items. Reproductions were also obtained by the librarian from other institutions and interspersed with original documents. See Processing Information for additional context.

Related Materials

Empire State VI Logbooks, 1990-1999 Identifer: CA-RG1-0008 https://sunymaritimearchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/54

Processing Information

In 1974, in conjunction with the college’s centennial, Carol Finerman, a graduate student in the Palmer School of Library Science, was hired to organize the Maritime College archives held at the Luce Library. According to a report by Finerman, “all the items that accumulated came in separately; none were deposited as a series of records from the offices of origin.”

From the late 1940s through the 1970s, librarians actively solicited alumni, faculty, and staff for materials documenting the school’s early history. However, these materials remained largely unorganized until 1974, when Finerman was hired.

Because the provenance of much of the material was unclear, and the records had not been transferred from administrative units, Finerman elected to create an alphanumeric classification scheme for the collection.

In 2017 the library embarked on a project to bring the college archives into the 21st century, creating a new organizational scheme and finding aids for the records in ArchivesSpace. As part of this project, the archivist re-processed the entire archives, rehousing the materials for preservation and bringing intellectual clarity to the arrangement. Given that the provenance and original order of the materials had already been disrupted, the archivist imposed their own arrangement based on the content of the items. Proper archival description, in adherence with Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), was also created for the first time.

Some items were obtained from other institutions as part of efforts by the early librarians to document the school's history, and mixed in with the original documents. During re-processing, the archivist elected to leave reproductions in folders, as separating them would have been a tricky and time-consuming process.