NEWMAN PORTAL DIGITIZES PAN EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS

Following digitization of The Clarion, the journal of the Pennsylvania Association of Numismatists (PAN), PAN Treasurer Pat McBride mentioned that PAN had a group of old educational videos in storage. Len Augsburger, Newman Portal coordinator, offered to investigate digitization of this material, and the first video from this effort is now available in the Newman collection on Internet Archive.

John Adams speaking at PAN Philadelphia show

From the 1989 PAN Convention, author and collector John Adams speaks on historical medals. In consulting The Clarion on the Newman Portal, we learn the event occurred on November 11, 1989 at the Philadelphia Holiday Inn, located at 4th and Arch Streets. Adams, who has seemingly not aged in the nearly three decades since, is introduced by the late numismatic literature dealer John Burns. Organizations with similar video archives are encouraged to contact Augsburger at leonard.augsburger@wustl.edu.

The Newman Portal is about more than just documents - it's about numismatic information in any form, and that includes books, web sites and audio/video content. The Newman Portal and its partner Internet Archive are dedicated to making this material available to all, not just for today, but long into the future. That mission involves managing and converting multiple physical and electronic formats.

Help preserve numismatic history. Locate and make available to the portal any old audio or video content you may have in the archives of your numismatic organizations or your own files. Let them be transferred to new media so the content won't be lost when the physical media deteriorates or technology marches so far past that machines can't be found to read them. Even Internet Archive was stumped with this old Super 8 format and the Newman Portal had to locate another provider.

I remember getting sick that week and being unable to go to Philadelphia for the PAN Show. I missed John's talk, but now I can hop into the Portal's time machine and go back to that day in 1989. And you can, too. Medal collectors in particular should enjoy this blast from the past.

Format problems never completely go away, it seems. The digitized video seems to work well on Microsoft browsers (Like Internet Explorer and Edge), but not so well (lately, at least) on Chrome. Please report any issues you find. Thanks. -Editor