NEW TO WMU: Clarkson's World Fleet Register

For the past year, WMU staff and students have enjoyed access to Clarkson's Shipping Intelligence Network , one of the premier databases for accessing shipping market reports, fixtures and transactions. At least two students from the Class of 2013 relied on data supplied by SIN for their recently-completed dissertations. Based on their feedback, and on the fact that Clarkson's has once again offered us a very good academic discount, we took out a subscription to SIN's companion database, Clarkson's World Fleet Register.

This database allows users to query and get "tabular data" on vessels by flag, owners, builders, class and nationality, with breakdowns by ship type and vessel characteristics, including GT, Dwt, Draught, Speed, Beam, fuel type and more. WFR additionally provides orderbook details on more than 8,000 ships from over 600 shipyards worldwide. As with SIN, the database has a sophisticated "Time Series" report generator as well as chart making functionality for pulling together and displaying unique cross sections of information from more than 90,000 vessels. Search results can also be downloaded in spreadsheet format.

As it does with the Shipping Intelligence Network, Clarkson's provides its own regular reports for The World Fleet Register. These can be downloaded and saved as PDFs.

User access to WFR is based on being within the WMU IP range AND having the user name and password for the WMU account. WMU staff and students who are not on campus will be prompted to log in with their WMU email accounts, which will then give them "proxy" access as if they were in the WMU domain.

However, the access process is a bit weird after that. Clarkson's gives WMU site-licensed access for the price of a single private user (otherwise we simply could not afford it), but that single user is yours truly, the WMU librarian. Therefore, it is my email address that is required as the user name on the WFR login form. And you will need the password from the library as well. We are not worried about the user name and password being passed out, because IP or proxy access is required anyway.

When downloading reports, a pop-up box appears stating that this account belongs to Chris Hoebeke and you are asked to confirm that you are -- well, me. Go ahead and lie and click "Accept." You aren't actually violating our terms of access; this is just a quirk of our arrangement with Clarkson's and the defaults of their authentication system.

As with the case of SIN, this database is for ACADEMIC RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. Using it for commercial purposes will jeopardize WMU's special access rights.

Anyway, we encourage students and staff to give it a try. Ask the library for the password, use it with my email address, and agree to store the password in your browser for next time.

Let us know what you think.