WEB RESOURCES FOR NUMISMATIC WRITERS

My list of top ten websites would depend on my current project. Some weeks I might visit 100 different sites without repeating.

I am known for biographical research. I have bookmarks for the LDS Church FamilySearch Site and the Social Security Death Index. I don't subscribe but I use commercial sites like RootsWeb and Ancestry.Com. Through my local library, the Hennepin County Library, I can access census records. In an area related to biography, I also have a bookmark for the Library of Congress site.

This is not a site but I am a big user of Google Books looking for items that are not in my library. Sometimes I am amazed by what I can find and other times I am annoyed that something is not yet available.

For my current research into the coinages of 1792, I frequently go back to the Heritage Auctions site to look up past sales listings.

Another site that should be as valuable is the Stack's Bowers site and their file of past auctions on the site Legacy.Stacks. This is, however, a big disappointment. They no longer have images from sales by the former firms of Stack's, Bowers and Merena and American Numismatic Rarities.

In general, I am trying to find new information from some obscure source rather than looking for research others have done and posted on numismatic sites.

I had also discovered the missing images on the Stack's sites. A few weeks ago I asked Vicken Yegparian at Stack's-Bowers about this, and apparently their tech staff is at work on a new site for the combined companies, and the images should be restored someday. Thank goodness! Here are the links to Pete's sites: -Editor

The Social Security Death Index is also available through ancestry.com. Some of the databases available through the Hennepin County Library require a library card number.

My research is in medieval Islamic coins of North Africa and Spain. Finding articles and books in the U.S can be difficult, but the following are great resources. I omit sites that are coins only (some great sites also).

1. World Catalog: (available at home through connection from the local library) catalogs all the books from cooperating libraries around the world and lists the libraries where they may be found. Also gives web sources where appropriate. http://www.worldcat.org/

3. JSTOR: (available at home through connection from the local library) Another means of searching for articles on-line. www.jstor.org

5. Academia.edu: a good source for newer academic articles, if the author participates. academia.edu

6. Digital library Nummis: Huge selection of on-line articles and books (mostly older because of copyright issues) for coins of every era and continent (except Antarctica!). members.ziggo.nl/tverspag/NUMIS/

Thanks to all who responded. I suspected that we would get a very wide range of resources, because numismatics is a very wide-ranging field. Once you get past "the usual suspects" of coin sites and libraries, where you go next depends very much on what you're looking for. While numismatic research naturally STARTS with coins themselves, it shouldn't END there - that's only the jumping-off point for a good researcher. Information is out there in the world somewhere, and the only way to get it into the numismatic sphere is to go find it and reel it in. -Editor