Shipping literature of the Great Lakes

the long version

"During the last century and a half, the Great Lakes shipping companies have printed a substantial amount of material relating to their operations. These publications are mainly sailing schedules, tourist promotional pieces, annual reports, and so forth, primarily issued in the form of pamphlets and brochures. This literature is scattered all across North America in scores of public repositories, quite often uncataloged in ephemera collections. This situation makes it very difficult for someone to find Great Lakes navigation paper, particularly if they are looking for a specific item.". "Excluded from the scope of this enterprise were paper things of marginal information value like tickets, menus, wine cards, napkins, posters, handbills, playing cards, post cards, window cards, counter cards, matchbooks, fans, calendars, stationary, envelopes, mailing labels, luggage tags, identification tags, certificates, ink blotters, place mats, bookmarks, passes, and minor give-away items that were little more than insignificant promotional trimmings.... This book does, however, identify about 80 percent of all literature ever issued by the shipping companies that plied our inland seas, and this sample sould prove adequate to serve most users"--Foreword.