DICK JOHNSON'S TOPICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

This is in reply to Dave Alexander's comment on the bibliography in his review of my Who's Who Among Medallic Artists in last week's E-Sylum, Dave wanted a list of the numismatic references in one alphabetical list. Instead I list the books, articles and films in a topical arrangement.

By classifying a large list of references -- over 800 in 69 pages -- I felt the topical arrangement increases the usefulness of the bibliography. I chose to catalog the references much like I catalog medals and tokens, by Topics. This brings related works together. I assigned a letter to each of 21 topical categories.

Surprise! Assigning a letter to similar topical works is exactly how the Library of Congress assigns their catalog number, the work's call number. "CJ" is the two-letter prefix for Numismatics in the L of C scheme of Subject Headings.. They must use a two-letter designation, however, because they catalog millions of books by this system.. .

After a letter designation I added a serial number for each publication in chronological order. This has the advantage of adding new works at the end as they are published.

The letters assigned were chosen for easy remembering. S for standard works, B for biographies, E for engravers, M for medals, V for videos and such. This left seven unassigned letters. This is where I assigned books and articles on individual artists of note spared across F through L.

Dave surmised a reader world have to remember a letter-number citation to look up the work's full listing. in the bibliography. He's right, but the letter has meaning. Isn't this more useful?

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
BOOK REVIEW: WHO'S WHO AMONG AMERICAN MEDALLISTS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n02a07.html)

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