The E-Sylum:  Volume 11, Number 13, March 30, 2008, Article 12

THOUGHTS ON AN ANA ONLINE NUMISMATIC REPOSITORY

[By complete coincidence, few hours after writing the above
item about digitized numismatic books I received a copy of
an email from Benjamin Keele to the chairs of ANA Committees
on Publications & Communications, Technology & Website, and
Library regarding an Online Numismatic Repository.  Ben
offered his letter for publication in The E-Sylum for comment.]

I am semi-dormant numismatist attending law school in Indiana.
I have been an ANA member since I was twelve. Through my
experiences publishing my undergraduate thesis and serving
as an editor on a law journal, I have seen the great benefits
of electronic archiving of scholarly materials. This led me
to think that an online archive of open-access numismatic
scholarship would be an immense resource. Many of these online
repositories are being established at universities. I think
it would outstanding if the ANA could make a repository of
archives in ANA publications, especially the Numismatist.
Perhaps other journals could offer their content for preservation
in the repository as well.

Of course, these sorts of projects require resources that
the ANA may not have at the moment. However, I think such
a project would greatly further the ANA's educational and
scholarly goals. Free, open-source software for institutional
repositories called DSpace is also available. DSpace was
developed by MIT for its repository.

I also know that copyright over the articles may be an issue.
While it would perhaps be too ambitious to convince every
author to consent to his or her work being archived and
published online, I am sure many authors would be willing
and future authors could be asked to agree as part of being
published in the Numismatist. I, for one, would be delighted
to sign a consent form for the two articles I have published
in the Numismatist (or any other numismatic publication,
for that matter).

Such a project would take a long time, but I thought I would
offer it up for your consideration. Perhaps the ANA is
already doing something similar that I was not aware of.  I
do know that a few articles from each Numismatist are published
in PDF on the ANA website. I think this is great, but a more
comprehensive and searchable archive would be an even greater
resource.

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization 
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor 
at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com

To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum