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V4 2001 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

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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