WAYNE'S NUMISMATIC DIARY: OCTOBER 30, 2016

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V19 2016 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 19, Number 44, October 30, 2016, Article 9

Last Sunday I got up early, walked our dog and drove to Dulles Airport while it was still dark. The sun was beginning to come up while I waited for the shuttle from the parking lot. I was on my way to St. Louis for a meeting of the Newman Numismatic Portal team.

My flight arrived uneventfully around 9:30am. Walking through the concourse I ran into John Feignbaum who'd actually been on the same flight after flying up to Dulles from Virginia Beach. He and his team of developers built (and continue to improve) the NNP web site.

I waited with John while he got a long-awaited cup of coffee from Starbucks. Together we took a cab to the campus of Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) where we were staying at the Knight Conference center. While John went off to visit with his son who is a WUSTl student, I worked to wrap up The E-Sylum in my room.

I took a break for lunch and walked several blocks to The Loop, a nearby commercial area. For grins I browsed through a retro record shop to see what kids these days are listening to on vinyl records. If I still had something to play them on I'd have bought a stack of old comedy albums - Woody Allen, Allan Sherman, you name it.

After a nice lunch at a barbecue place I took a picture of the Bakery for Dogs. If I'd had more time to kill I would have browsed through some of the art shops, which had some interesting pieces in the windows.

Dinner
About 5:45 I published The E-Sylum and headed down to the lobby and met NNP Project Coordinator Len Augsburger, who had flown in from Chicago. Soon we were joined by John Feigenbaum and his lead developer Greg Bradley. Len drove us to an upscale seafood restaurant downtown. Eric Newman's son Andy joined us and we were seated at a nice round table for six.

Andy filled us in on some of the backstory around the Presidential Debate which took place at WUSTL's new gymnasium complex two weeks before. When the waitress asked if we were expecting another diner for the empty sixth seat, Andy told her "Donald Trump cancelled on us."

We had a wonderful dinner and talked about just about everything except NNP, from politics to the $240M WUSTL construction project, the transition of the Edison Brothers company and the history of the suffix -rama (from panorama to diorama, cyclorama, to bowl-o-rama and anything-o-rama).

Newman Numismatic Portal Team Meeting
Around 9:30 Monday morning I met Len and John Kraljevich in the lobby. John had flown in from South Carolina earlier that morning and would be joining us for the day. Together with John and Greg we walked across campus to the Olin Library for our meeting.

The full meeting wouldn't start until 11, but we used the time to discuss priorities for new NNP web site features for 2017. In time the group grew to 14 people including Andy Newman, Chris Freeland, Robert Manley and others from the library staff, Newman Museum curator Tom Serfass, E-Sylum subscriber Peter Gaspar, a WUSTL Chemistry professor and numismatist. Peter was the first person to sign up after The E-Sylum was announced on the internet - he's been with us since September 5, 1998, and this was the first time we'd met in person.

Len gave a PowerPoint presentation outlining our progress over the past year and plans for the year ahead. While we'll continue to add content to the site, we'll also work to improve search features, social media connections and personalized content such as tags and lists of favorites. We're looking forward to discussing feature requests at next week's inaugural User Forum in Baltimore. The meeting concluded with conversations over boxed lunches.

Visiting Eric
After lunch came the highlight of my trip - John Feigenbaum and Greg had planes to catch, but Len, JK and I would have a chance to meet with Eric Newman at his home. Andy was already there and welcomed us in. Eric was expecting us, sitting in a comfy electric recliner chair with three recent Whitman coin books on the table in front of him.

Eric was as gracious as ever, telling us HE was the one honored to be visited by us. He told us he was pleased with the progress on the Portal. John's role in 2017 will be "Chief Storyteller". Len came up with that one - John will use his skills as a numismatic researcher to find, interpret and publicize research material available on the Portal. I joked that he'd better read fast, because there are already nearly half a million pages of material there. John laughed and thought he'd never run out of things to write about.

Early Paper Money of America 5th ed with Eric Newmans notes

We discussed a possible 6th edition of Eric's Early American Paper Money book. Andy showed us a copy of the 5th edition with Eric's notes.

Other topics included the high schools we graduated from. Eric was the first student enrolled at his brand-new school, and he remembered one of his first chores there was digging a small trench to drain water away from a downspout.

His grandfather's framed pharmacy school diploma was nearby, and Eric recalled how he sold leeches from his store, where he slept on the floor behind the counter and got up to serve customers whenever needed, even in the middle of the night.

Scanning Center Visit
Our next stop was the Newman Numismatic Portal scanning center, where the equipment from Internet Archive is installed. The scanners are in a small dark room off a main office which is kept locked to protect the rare books often stored there. The office is in a former department store building now owned by the University and used for library offices and storage.

Digitization manager Robert Manley was there working to catalog some of the material. The scanning room was unusually empty and quiet. It was midterm season, and the students who typically man the machines were temporarily absent.

Len had made a trip to Eric's bank vault where some of his rarest books were kept. John and I had a ball examining them.

Outside the NNP office were many rows of movable shelves, and one section was reserved for the Newman Numismatic Portal. Here Len and John Kraljevich are reviewing some of the scanning pipeline material.

Washington University is a member of the Federal Reserve library system and as such holds a substantial collection of U.S. government documents. Many of these have numismatic content. One of the lesser known examples is the Congressional Serial Set, an 18,000 volume record of congressional proceedings. Washington U. has a complete hard copy of this set and many volumes with numismatic content have been pulled onto the Newman shelves for scanning.

Other holdings include ephemeral publications from the U.S. Mint, Bureau of Engraving annual reports, etc. This collection is by no means complete with respect to numismatics, but it is considerable, and physically located at the St. Louis scanning center, so this is low-hanging fruit for the Newman Portal.

The annual reports of the U.S. Mint director are another group in the library collection, and, with gaps filled in by Dan Hamelberg, Bill Burd, and Paul Hybert, we have a fairly complete run of this important series.

Heading Home
John had a plane to catch, so our visit was a short one. Len took us both to the airport. I sat down in a restaurant and drafted some of this diary, not knowing which would come first - dinnertime or a dead battery. The race was a dead heat. I packed up my laptop and had dinner before catching my own plane back to Dulles at 6:30.

It was a short visit, but a reassuring one. The Newman Numismatic Portal project is firing on all cylinders. Another specialty organization came to us offering their periodical for digitization Sunday night after dinner. It's an exciting time. Stay tuned for more information throughout the coming year.

WAYNE'S NUMISMATIC DIARY: OCTOBER 30, 2016

THE BOOK BAZARRE