Newman Numismatic Portal Usage
Sonorandesertrat
Posts: 5,695 ✭✭✭✭✭
The New Numismatic Portal (affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis) is offering an increasing array of free numismatic resources online. In the Autumn 2016 issue of The Asylum, well-known numismatic literature dealer Charles Davis expressed concern for the future of numismatic literature collecting and his profession. He suggested that the NNP would cause a notable decline in numismatic book/journal/catalog/etc. purchases by dedicated and casual collectors.
Have you used the portal yet? Is it likely to change your buying habits (i.e., buy less, hoping to one day see resources freely available via the NNP)?
Member: EAC, NBS, C4, CWTS, ANA
RMR: 'Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?'
CJ: 'No one!' [Ain't no angels in the coin biz]
RMR: 'Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?'
CJ: 'No one!' [Ain't no angels in the coin biz]
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I tried, the menu is not intuitive, nor the search, appears to be a well meaning fuster.
Perhaps, but since more stuff is online I have been able to find more literature that I am interested in, so I can target specific purchases.
Pacific Northwest Numismatic Association
When the NNP was being organized, recommendations were made for detailed, professional system design documentation and interface documents, all in accordance with software development best practices. These were repeatedly rejected by the Washington Univ. staff member who was in charge at that time.
Much correction and improvement has been made by Len Augsberger since he took over as PM.
Charlie expressed the same to me at the ANA. I think the availability of such a great archive can diminish random purchases by individuals looking for specific information but encourage collecting literature by exposing outstanding material to a greater audience.
Latin American Collection
It has not changed my desire to own my own copies of things. If anything, it has pointed me to look for things I did not know to look for in the past.
I've used it a few times and I've found that the search works pretty well. Just amazing that so many resources are scanned in and are searchable as well.
More and more publications are being added too which is great. Here in Southern California, the Numismatic Association of Southern California (NASC) just recently agreed to have NNP scan and host all of their old publications of The NASC Quarterly which dates back to 1959. Lots of great articles and information in these older publications that would otherwise be very difficult for folks to access. A great asset to the members of the NASC and to numismatists all around the World.
Michael Kittle Rare Coins --- 1908-S Indian Head Cent Grading Set --- No. 1 1909 Mint Set --- Kittlecoins on Facebook --- Long Beach Table 448
That is a very valid concern.
I will not buy a physical copy of anything that is on the NNP. In fact, just this month I found that all volumes of a particular periodical are now on the NNP, so I don't have to buy the ones I don't have. I collect information, not literature. But, if you're a collector of literature, you should still be buying a physical copy.
Therefore, having this information free online should not impact at all true literature collectors. After all, photos of coins never stopped people from collecting coins! And I still think the original copies of the Declaration of Independence are selling for good money.
I foresee two issues:
1. Sometimes casual literature collectors (e.g., people primarily interested in specific information) get hooked, and turn into serious literature collectors. The NNP may have a negative impact on this niche area of numismatics.
2. The number of active literature dealers and auctioneers has declined by ca. 50% during the last 7-8 years (Burns, Grady, Moulton, Sklow, Lake have passed away or gotten out of the business). Limited resale opportunities may cause some collectors to be more hesitant about making purchases of collectible numismatic literature.
RMR: 'Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?'
CJ: 'No one!' [Ain't no angels in the coin biz]
I used the Newman Numismatic Portal to download 120 back issues of the Gobrecht Journal.
(It took awhile to do that; would have been nicer if I could have clicked once to get all 120 in a zip file).
The alternative would have been to try to find and buy the 5 Collective Volumes which contain issues 1-78,
and then find 79-120. The Collective Volumes 1-5 could be purchased in April 2016 for about $130.
But that still leaves the problem of finding 79-120. PDFs are easier to store and a lot faster for me to access, too.
More recently, I used the NNP to download a scanned copy of Valentine' Half Dime book, in hope of finding better quality images of the original plates. The images were slightly better than in my Quarterman edition, but the scan resolution was not as good as I had hoped for. So I went looking on the web to see if I could buy a copy of the first edition (American Numismatic Society, Numismatic Notes and Monographs, No. 48, 1931) with the photographic plates. I didn't find a copy for sale. However, I found a higher resolution scanned version. It's still not quite as high resolution as I'd like, but it's a big improvement over what I had.
Summary: I like books more for their information content than to collect physical copies of them.
I did pay $200 for a copy of Early U.S. Dimes a few years ago; being somewhat on the fence about whether
I should pay that much for a book in a series that is not my primary interest.
A few years later the new JRCS book came out, with better information and much better photo quality.
Such is the nature of the game with these sorts of books.
Yosclimber just posted about scanning Valentine's 'Half Dome' (sic) book. That made me chuckle. Well done!
RMR: 'Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?'
CJ: 'No one!' [Ain't no angels in the coin biz]
Yep, I've caught myself making that typo in the past! You beat me to it this time!
NNP is about collecting, storing and retrieving information.
Appreciating and collecting rare books is not really about information. Every edition of Mark Twain's, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" has the same information, but the first edition (1876) is valued at $80,000; a modern paperback from a used book sale might cost 50-cents. I see no reduction in the number of rare book collectors.
Further, NNP will permit only limited "clips" from copyright materials - enough for the researcher to determine if the book is of potential utility to them. Then the researcher must buy or borrow the full edition - this should boost sales of books, not suppress them.
Yosclimber - sorry you had to download all those individual issues. The Newman Portal uses Internet Archive as a backbone, and there are automated ways of pulling content off Internet Archive, but some programming skill is required (Python, Linux shell, etc.). Anyone interested can PM me for more info.
As far as collecting literature goes, I tend to use the Newman Portal for search and then go retrieve the hardcopy from my library. I still need to see things in print, although the next generation may operate differently.
@Coinosaurus - do you think there would be an objection if I made the 120 issues available as a single zip file on my website? (With proper links to the original source of the content, of course).
Then people could download the whole set without any programming skill. It's about 60mb as I recall.
I have an updated version of the index as well.
not much of a market for the first edition of us commemorative coins.
red book and blue book early editions (and even until this year) may garner physical sales as they seem to have some collector base. I think there will be more of a rule of non-collecting first edition numismatic books, than collecting them.
To keep selling physicals, there needs to be a value add. Do it better than done online and enforce the copyright.
I have uploaded the ZIP file with Gobrecht Journal issues #1-120 to my website:
stanford.edu/~clint/q/Gobrecht_Journal.htm
The ZIP is 300 mb, but it does get you all the PDFs with one click and maybe 5-10 minutes of download time.
(You can view the above page without downloading the ZIP).
I also updated the Index (Excel file).
The Index now includes issues 101-120, and it is easier to sort in Excel (previously it had many blank cells).
It is included in the ZIP, or you can download it independently on the above page (1 mb).
Can you send the improvements to NNP? Might be helpful to them.
With trepidation, I'm going to ask. The NNP Search, how to use it, how to find?
What is the format for the search?
Enter Linderman, on the front page into search returns "Page 1 of 193" Yikes! I'm lookin for a Linderman signed letter from 1879.
Enter Linderman, 1879 returns one result.
Are there separators, quote / unquote definers, plusses or minuses, what gives?
Nor do I see any help for figuring out the NNP search format. I'm probably overlooking it.
I use the NNP often. The best information for my own use is the recently added United States Mint records from the National Archives, courtesy of the efforts of RW Julian. Prior to this, a trip to Philadelphia was necessary to view the records, as I had done on several occasions. From this link it is fairly intuitive to find the type of information one is looking for, and it makes for some very interesting browsing of actual early Mint records that have previously not been available to the public https://nnp.wustl.edu/Library/Archives?searchLetter=U
Yosclimber has contributed his update of the Gobrecht Journal index to the Newman Portal - thanks!
Epcjimi1 - search is getting a lot of attention right now, there are definitely some improvements to be made. The existing search on the site is exact text only. For Linderman, there is nothing in 1879, but there are a couple entries from 1878 and 1880 in the U.S. congressional reports series --
https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/publisherdetail/512550?Year=1878&displayAmt=50
Yeah, I've seen that. It's lots of lists.
Enter Linderman, 1877 into NNP search, return, uno.
Enter Linderman, 1875 into NNP search, return, zero.
The NNP appears to be not very searchable, rather you do the searching.
It's a bunch of images of documents.
epcjimi1 -
Can you be more specific about your search? Are you looking for everything dated 1879 with Linderman's name on it? (Linderman signed thousands of documents during 1879 -- most are routine.)
I can search my NARA database and documents, and send you what I happen to have. I use a fully indexed search engine that can retrieve any word, phrase, Boolian and fuzzy-search you want.
PS: Transcriptions have only begun to touch the surface of handwritten and non-OCR typed documents, so much content remains hidden.
Thanks Yosemite - downloading as I write this.
Best, SH