ON DIGITIZING THE NATIONAL NUMISMATIC COLLECTION

I was really excited to explore the Smithsonian coin holdings digitally. It is evidently too expensive for them to display this material, and ever since the Lilly Collection got shuffled off in favor of some evidently more sexy artifacts, we numismatists have been at the far end of the line.

I wanted to look at the French coins in the Paul A Straub Collection. A filtered search under "France" returned 356 items. While I suppose we ought to be grateful for whatever we get, all in all I have to give the part I reviewed a D. However I did not look at any other collections, where the cataloging may be better (or worse).

The first and largest problem was the lack of reverse images. French mint marks are on the reverse, and the text descriptions are too skeletal to supply the information, such as "2 Francs date made 1804 [plus a museum ID no]." On only three images did little arrows appear in the margin where you could click to show the reverse, and as far as I can tell this option appeared randomly. The FAQ were only generally applicable to artifacts in general. There was nothing on how to get to the reverses consistently.

The date "1804" shows an unfortunate lack of numismatic background. At this time French coins were dated from the founding of the Republic on September 22, 1792, so "1804" could be either L'An 12 or L'An 13 because the Republican Calendar does not overlap the Gregorian one. (Don't you love revolutions?)

Imaging seems to have been an on-going project or employed more than one contractor. Backgrounds were white or black, and some (helpfully) had a color chart and 2 cm scale. Image quality also varied, although in general it was modest at best. Professional coin photographers probably would have something more coherent to say, but to me images suffered from incident light from below that was too strong, thus resulting in areas of glare and obscurity. Of course, it is on the web, so resolution is bad. You can enlarge the image but this only produces what appears to be a larger image of poor resolution. There is no option to link to a high def counterpart.

Sadly missing was any provenance on the coins. I suppose it is possible the donor didn't supply it, but for ancients in particular it would be extremely helpful. Judging from what I saw in my French sample I doubt that information of that sort would have been entered into the catalog anyway.

The Institution seems to recognize it is not creating a work of art here, specifically characterizing it as a "work in progress." They solicit feedback, but the comments box I tried but it did not accept any text.

Paul Straub was one of the largest contributors to the Smithsonian numismatic collection, but much of the material falls into the category of "study collection". MS-65's and proofs were not evident, and are mixed in with a great deal of VF-EF coins. Of course, Straub had been adding things up to his death in 1958, so this is certainly to be expected. Grade collecting was hardly a gleam in a collector's eye at that time.

The entries also specify if the item can be seen on display. I found no evidence that any of Straub's material is on display, and I suspect getting in to see it in person would be quite difficult due to staffing and security issues; the FAQ did not address this, referring questions to curatorial staff. It is painfully obvious that donated coins will be not be put on display under the current circumstances. While the digital project is a wonderful first step, I certainly agree it is a "work in progress".

Thanks for the tip!

Dear Mr. Hensley,

Thank you very much for sharing this feedback. It is always helpful for us to hear from digital visitors and we take your feedback seriously. You are absolutely correct that our catalog records are works in progress. The NNC has a very small staff team and most of our team members are funded by the generosity of the Friends of the NNC and short-term grants. Given the large size of the collection and small number of records online, we have prioritized sharing online as much of the collection as possible through mass digitization projects (such as with the Paul Straub collection).

In those mass digitization projects, our short-term staff members (who are not trained numismatists) are only able to record the existing information about the object as documented on the object's box by the original collector or former NNC staff member, rather than do research on each individual object. Unfortunately, that means that some of our catalog records contain errors and outdated descriptions. We share your concern about this. We warmly welcome feedback on our records and are enthusiastic about correcting any errors that we are made aware of. If the comment box on the object record is not working, we are happy to accept feedback via email at: NMAH-NNC@si.edu.

While we agree that this is not an ideal cataloging system, we believe that making these records available online is still important progress toward making the NNC a public resource. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we regularly welcomed in person research visitors and, when we are permitted to restart research visits, we encourage researchers to make appointments to consult the collection in the Howard F. Bowker Research Room. To make an appointment, please send an email to: NMAH-NNC@si.edu.

With regard to the Straub collection, all Straub objects have both obverse and reverse images available. When you select an object record, click on the small arrows in the lower left hand side of the image box to change the image from obverse to reverse or vice versa. If you have found individual records where images are missing, please email us at NMAH-NNC@si.edu and we will explore why those images are not appearing online as they should be. Please be assured that both images have been taken and if they are not showing up it is due to a glitch in the museum's database. We absolutely agree that both images are necessary and should be made available to the public.

A small number of Straub's coins are on display in our gallery, The Value of Money, but the majority of the Straub collection is not on display. Given the enormous scale of the NNC and many treasures it holds, only a small portion of the NNC is on public display at any given time. We believe that this makes our digitization efforts even more urgent and essential. Thank you for taking the time to give us feedback and please don't hesitate to reach out with any further questions or concerns.

Kindest Regards,
Ellen

Dr. Ellen Feingold
Curator, National Numismatic Collection
National Museum of American History

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
DIGITIZING THE NATIONAL NUMISMATIC COLLECTION (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n45a10.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web