The E-Sylum:  Volume 4, Number 24, June 10, 2001, Article 9

NEWSGROUPS AS LITERATURE 

   Michael E. Marotta  <mercury@well.com> writes: "Anyone 
   who subscribes to The E-sylum should take the time to dive 
   into the numismatic newsgroup archives, for instance at 
   http://groups.google.com/ (the former Deja News).  The 
   groups rec.collecting.coins and rec.collecting.paper-money 
   are to our cyberspace matrix what the learned society meetings 
   were to the literary milieu of 1900. 

   As news media, the greatest strength in these Usenet newsgroups 
   is also their most grievous flaw:  there is no editorial control. 
   Anyone can claim anything.  Differences of opinion often 
   degenerate into name-calling with facts soon abandoned. As a 
   result, the reader is left to their own resources when it comes 
   to evaluating the veracity of any assertion -- which is perhaps 
   how life really works. 

   As archives, however, these newsgroups provide a massive 
   repository of numismatic information. While the reader must 
   be careful, the truth of any contentious assertion is eventually 
   obtained, and most of what is placed there is not putative. 
   For the numismatic bibliomaniac, the pleasures may be much 
   different: watching persons, personalities, and personas come 
   and go -- act, react, and interact.   I predict that in 50 years, 
   having a complete archive of these numismatic newsgroups 
   will be as valuable as a full set Woodward or Chapman 
   catalogs. " 

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

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