The Newman Numismatic Portal has two active scanning operations in place - one at Washington University in St. Louis, and the newest at
the American Numismatic Society in New York. An article published Friday February 12, 2016 Publications Director Andrew Reinhard reports
that over 30,000 pages have already been digitized. Here's an excerpt - be sure to read the complete version online, with more great
images. -Editor
In December 2015, the American Numismatic Society began a joint project with the Newman Numismatic Portal, an online numismatic
resource, in order to enable greater access to American numismatic research material on both the ANS Digital Library and Newman Portal
websites.
To date, nearly 500 early American auction catalogues have been scanned by the ANS for this project totaling over 30,000 pages so far.
These catalogues include those of Frossard, Woodward, Chapman, Elder, and other notable names in the field.
John Graffeo, the scanner operator, trained first with ANS librarian/archivist David Hill throughout 2015 in the care and handling of the
Society’s rare books, and later trained in Princeton with the Internet Archive on how to use the revolutionary Table Top Scribe scanner. The scanning
process includes matching an auction catalogue with its metadata (information about the book) in the ANS’s library catalogue, taking a test image,
and then proceeding to scan the rest of the volume.
The scanner itself is comprised of a metal carriage that cradles each book so as not to effect the spine. Graffeo uses a foot-pedal to
raise the book to a pair of glass panes after which he clicks a button to activate two cameras, which photograph the book’s spread.
After the catalogue has been photographed, Graffeo checks for image quality, tags each page (front matter, interior pages, back matter,
cover), and then crops each image, being sure to maintain all of the data on the page including handwritten marginalia such as sale prices and buyer
names. Once the volume is complete, Graffeo uploads it to the Internet Archive for a spot-check on quality, after which it goes live online at the
Newman Numismatic Portal as part of the ANS’s collection of online auction catalogues. Some of the auction catalogues are exceedingly fragile, so
scanning them in this fashion helps to preserve their contents without destroying or damaging the books.
“This is a great project,” Graffeo said between scans. “It’s extending the wealth of numismatic information and sharing it for the
public good.” All of the scans are available immediately as Open Access for free use by anyone for any reason. The content is shared, and
the artifact of the book is preserved. Numismatics has been an interdisciplinary subject since its inception, and making all of the ANS’s
holdings publicly available remains central to the Society’s mission.
“We are thrilled to have this opportunity to begin distributing some of the Library’s research collections on a large scale in the same
way that much of the Society’s coin collections are being made available through online research tools like PELLA, OCRE, and MANTIS,” David
Hill, supervisor of the onsite operations, said. “When you think about all of the materials in the Library’s Rare Book Room, which include
unique archival collections such as dealer and collector correspondence, you really begin to realize what an impact a project like this can
have.”
This is wonderful progress - many thanks to John Griffeo for his patience and dedication to the scanning task. What's more amazing is
to realize that we're only at the tip of the iceberg of available numismatic material. The benefits to future researchers, collectors
and dealers is immense. -Editor
To read the complete article, see:
ANS SCANNING PROJECT PASSES 30,000 PAGES (www.anspocketchange.org/scanning/)
Wayne Homren, Editor
The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.
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