Welcome to The E-Sylum: Volume 3, Number 12, March 19, 2000: an electronic publication of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society. Copyright (c) 2000, The Numismatic Bibliomania Society. SUBSCRIBER UPDATES We have three new subscribers this week: Dr. Larry Brilliant, Gene Hessler (a gift subscription courtesy of Bob Cochran), and Mike Jones of Honolulu, Hawaii. Welcome aboard! Gregory Leitschuh has been dropped due to a bad email address. This brings our net subscriber count to 287. ASYLUM MAILS AT LAST! After a set of unrelated delays, the 1999 No. 4 issue of The Asylum was mailed on Wednesday, and has at last begun arriving in members' mailboxes. We've already gotten several good comments on it. Congratulations are due our new editor, Tom Fort, for stepping into the breach and doing a fine job. SUBSCRIBER COMMENTS New subscriber Mike Jones writes: "I went through all the back issues of The E-Sylum on the net and found them to be quite interesting. I have been into coin books since 1972, the year that I joined the ANA, and it is a pity that many books can still be bought at mid-1970 prices even today. Unlike years ago, today one can find many things on the internet, and some bargains can be found on most anything...including books. I find books on communion tokens very hard to come by so I buy just about all I see" NBS VICE-PRESIDENT RESIGNS NBS Vice President David Sklow writes: "It is with the deepest regret that I must resign my position on the NBS board. Please accept this notice of my resignation effective immediately. I do this for personal, family and medical reasons. Thank you." Dave's input and assistance in NBS matters will be missed. The Board wishes to thank Dave for his service, and wishes the best for him and his wife Sherry. No decision has been made yet on whether to fill his position for the remainder of his term. CHANGES AT THE MONEY TREE David is also relinquishing his role as cataloguer at The Money Tree. In a letter sent to customers this week, Tree cofounder Myron Xenos announced that with Dave's departure, the numismatic literature mail bid and auction sales aspects of The Money Tree will cease. However, The Money Tree lives on and its numismatic book publishing activity will continue. Myron will look forward to seeing his fellow numismatic bibliophiles at the ANA convention this summer, and invites everyone to stay in touch via his email address: Xenos1@prodigy.net CONVERTING SLIDES TO DIGITAL FORMAT Bob Cochran writes: "I purchased an HP 5200CSE scanner a few months ago, and also purchased a slide adapter for it. I haven't used the slide adapter yet, but the part number is C7677-67735. It was about $25." Mike Metras writes: "Alan Luedeking asks whether anyone has an easy way to scan slides. I think I can infer from the content of his question that he has a scanner, hopefully a flatbed scanner. If so, a friend recently came across an internet site that tells how to build a simple paper reflector- adapter that allows you to scan slides with a regular flatbed scanner. Look at http://www.abstractconcreteworks.com/essays/scanning/Backlighter.html Not only does it look like it will do the job, but he also directs you to a really fine site (http://www.scantips.com/) with a lot of very good tips on scanning. I have not tried the reflector because I have the scanner I mention in the next paragraph, but it sure looks like it should work with a little effort. That being said, I use a Hewlett Packard Photo Smart scanner. It is designed specifically for scanning slides, negatives, and small (up to 3x5) photos. It is in the $300-$400 range depending on where you get it. But I do a lot of slide and negative digitizing and this is a really wonderful tool for doing it quickly and efficiently. It allows me to scan even small portions of the original slide or negative. If the quality is in the slide, this scanner picks it up. For photos, it is so much better to scan the negative than the print because you can get all the sharpness of the original." Kerry Wetterstrom, Publisher of The Celator, writes: "In response to Alan Luedeking's request for information on scanning slides, I use a Nikon Coolscan III slide scanner. It works beautifully, is easy to set-up and use, and comes with its own software that is also simple to use (or a plug-in that works with Photoshop). Relatively inexpensive at approximately $750, the cost is justified if you own a lot of slides that you want to scan. I use it for The Celator and have found it invaluable. Many flatbed scanners have the ability to scan transparencies but do not work as well with mounted 35mm slides." BINDING AS A SAVIOR Craig N. Smith writes: "I read with interest the various comments regarding the binding of periodicals. Although I agree with George Kolbe that binding rarely pays in an absolute sense, I wonder if we are being short sighted in viewing this on only a return on investment proposition. Perhaps, a longer or different view should be taken. I wonder how many complete copies of the Numismatist would exist, if none had ever been bound? I think one could argue that many of the existing copies would have been carelessly thrown away by relatives who did not recognize the value of this little known periodical. By binding these issues in volumes, the series takes on the value of something that appears to be of greater value than just an individual issue might have to the non-numismatist. I think it could be argued that the very act of binding imbues these periodicals with a greater value than they might ordinarily appear to have." JOHNSON COMPILES AN 'AMERICAN FORRER' Dick Johnson (who writes under the name D. Wayne Johnson) is nearing completion of a work on all the artists, engravers, diesinkers, sculptors and medalists in America. Johnson was the founding editor of Coin World and later the director of research at Medallic Art Co (where he created the firm's archives and cataloged more than 5,000 of the firm's medallic productions). The work contains data on more than 2,800 American artists in a databank that is the equivalent of 1,200 pages. Each artist's entry contains brief biographical data, a listing of every documented coin and medal the artist created, numismatic citations, appearances in auction sales, museum collections which contain the item, and references to the artist and the items in numismatic and biographical literature. The author has found a publisher of high quality art reference books, Sound View Press, of Madison, Connecticut, which has set tentative plans for publishing this work later this year. "I examined Forrer's Dictionary of Medalists and tried to overcome Forrer's shortcomings," Johnson writes. "I list the items in tabular form and group similar items together, all coins together, all medals in series together, etc. In all there are 25 categories. "What was surprising, however, was the need to separate out restrikes and reissues, since the art of one item would be used later in another form. An example is Adolph A. Weinman's Liberty Walking design on the 1916 half dollar appearing later on bullion coins. This always occurred after the death of the artist, requiring extensive research on artist's vital data, his date of death being most important. "I also learned one very important fact -- eighty percent of 19th century American diestruck pieces are unsigned and their creators are unknown. Thus I welcome anyone's contribution of information on the work of any American diesinker engraver that documents unsigned items. I am making every effort to make this book as comprehensive, complete and accurate as possible." FEATURED WEB SITE This week's featured web site features the Coffee Mill tokens of Ceylon (1841-1890). "The majority of the copper tokens were issued by Coffee Mills in Ceylon during the years when there was a dearth of small change prior to 1870. A minority were struck later until the early 1880's." http://lakdiva.com/coins/coffee/index.html Wayne Homren Numismatic Bibliomania Society The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. For more information please see our web site at http://www.coinbooks.org/ There is a membership application available on the web site. To join, print the application and return it with your check to the address printed on the application. For those without web access, contact Dave Hirt, NBS Secretary-Treasurer, 5911 Quinn Orchard Road, Frederick, MD 21704 (To be removed from this mailing list write to me at whomren@coinlibrary.com)
