The E-Sylum:  Volume 11, Number 1, January 6, 2008, Article 7

BOOK REVIEW BY MYRON XENOS: CANADIAN NUMISMATIC BIBLIOGRAPHY

Myron Xenos writes: "Back in the early nineties, a fellow from
County Cork, Ireland struck up an e-mail exchange with me. His
name is Darryl Atchison, and he was putting together a bibliography
of Canadian numismatic literature, no easy task considering the
Atlantic Ocean would slow down anyone without a computer. As
the years rolled by, I would send him some items, and, considering
the enormity of such a project, figured that this might fizzle
out somewhere along the way.

"Oh, me of little faith - what should arrive at my office in
December but a monstrous two-volume work of art titled Canadian
Numismatic Bibliography.  This beautiful set contains 1,114 pages
of great information laced with hundreds of photos and illustrations
of coins, books, people, and items of ephemera, many seldom seen.
There are 95 pages of index to make life easier as we all look
to see if our names were mentioned or to actually make our
research a bit easier.

"Three hundred signed and numbered sets were printed on
acid-free paper. A list of 125 original subscribers is present
on the page before the index. The work was published by the
Numismatic Education Society of Canada, with a grant from the
J. Douglas Ferguson Research Foundation.

"The two volume work is neatly organized, and after 23 pages
of introductions, acknowledgements, and historical background,
begins with general numismatics, pre-Confederation coins,
medals & tokens and continues for another 1000 pages covering
a wealth of written material from all sorts of Canadian resources.

"I believe many of Darryl's bibliographies will end up on
library shelves where future numismatic writers can go to
get a jump-start on their research. Darryl's efforts equal
the size of Dave Bowers' two volumes on U.S. silver dollars.
Congratulations to all involved in the project."

[I had the opportunity to meet Darryl and review the CNB
manuscript at Heathrow airport in London last summer.   I'm
proud to have been one of the charter subscribers to the
project and agree with Myron that it's an "instant" classic
- a monumental effort that will pave the way for numismatic
researchers of the future.

Being across the pond in Ireland, Darryl was actually among
the last to get his copy of the final printed books.  His
comments follow. -Editor]

Darryl Atchison writes: "I received my copies of the CNB about
two and half weeks ago and spent some time looking through the
books over the holidays. I was very pleased with both the overall
quality and presentation of the books, but I was disappointed
with the quality of some of the photos in Chapter 12 - like my
own for example (and a few others like it).

"However, I was quite surprised at the very high quality of
many of the other photos.  For example, if you look at a lot
of the images (such as the coins, medals and banknotes) under
reasonably good magnification, the images don't break apart
into dots.  I showed the book to my father-in-law yesterday
and he spent two hours just going through volume two.  He used
a magnifying glass which is how I found this out.  He has no
interest in Canadian numismatics but was still quite impressed,
I believe.  Anyhow, try out a magnifier for yourself and I
think you'll be amazed at what you can see."

 CANADIAN NUMISMATIC BIBLIOGRAPHY READY FOR PRINTING
 esylum_v10n26a02.html

 WAYNE'S LONDON DIARY 1 JULY, 2007
 esylum_v10n26a13.html

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

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