The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 45, October 23, 2005, Article 2

SNG PROJECT UPDATE

Rick Witschonke writes: "The October 2005 newsletter from the
International Numismatic Commission includes an interesting item
on the future of the SNG that I thought might be of interest."

In the newsletter, Harald Nilsson, Chairman SNG Sub-Committee
of the INC writes:

"It has become more and more evident that the series of Sylloge
Nummorum Graecorum (SNG), now rapidly coming close to
200 published volumes since its beginning in 1931, faces a new
world. We have come far from the end of the 19th century and
its publishing standards that were the background for Sir Edward
Stanley Robinson when he started the SNG series for the British
Academy. His aim was to publish every coin with photo and a
small amount of information in a very standardised way in order
to make smaller and less well known collections known to the
collectors and and the scholarly world. He also thought that the
publication should be quick and make the Greek coins easily
available for research. He was inspired by the series Corpus
Vasorum Antiquorum (CVA), started just a few years before,
from which he also took the very big format of the books."

"Looking to the situation today we find that we have two
diverging perspectives. On the one hand, the use of computers
and the digitising of collections have increased the speed with
which we can work and also communicate our information to
fellow researchers. On the other hand, however, in spite of the
possibilities that the data world offers, the cost of publication
has increased immensely to such a degree that even big and
rather fortunate collections have decided to stop publishing their
series."

[After a number of meetings ...] "further strength was given to
considerations of how to publish volumes only on the web,
how to avoid the same coin appearing in several connections
if it has for example been moved from one collection to another
and also how to know when corrections are made to the
descriptions of the published coins ('editions').

"There also seems to be a possibility of applying for EU
financial support for the Series and a common homepage for
all SNG projects where one can find information on published
volumes and where to buy them as well as the contents of the
digitised SNG volumes."

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  Wayne Homren, Editor

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