By Len Augsburger – Newman Numismatic Portal ……
June is typically a slow month for the numismatic business as collectors tend to be out and about and transitioning into summer activities. Not so at the Newman Numismatic Portal – in fact, summer is our busy season as students are looking for work and are less stressed than during the school year. Situated at Washington University in St. Louis, we have access to a great group of students, and our project employs at least half a dozen during the summer months.
Our content continues to grow correspondingly and we are close to reaching the 15,000-document milestone. Earlier this year our accumulated scanned page count exceeded one million. We’re not stopping there! We have a constant stream of auction catalogs, periodicals, books, and numismatic archival material moving through the scanning center in St. Louis.
Our center at the American Numismatic Society (ANS) is equally engaged, and is currently scanning the archival records of the New Netherlands coin firm of New York. Earlier this year the ANS completed scanning of the Virgil Brand ledgers, and already a number of individuals have stepped forward to assist in indexing this massive record of one of the most important American collections. Without online access, this could not happen, and we are grateful to the ANS and individual transcribers for facilitating this work.
In addition to St. Louis and New York, we recently initiated a special project at the Internet Archive scanning center located at Princeton University in New Jersey. Two pallets of material, weighing nearly a ton, will keep them busy for some months. Can you guess what it is? We will comment further on this going into the American Numismatic Association (ANA) convention in Denver in August. For those attending, we’ll be presenting on the Newman Portal at the Numismatic Literary Guild (NLG) symposium on August 3 at 10 A.M. All are invited.
As always, feel free to contact me with any of your research needs. I can be reached at [email protected].
Len Augsburger
Project Coordinator, Newman Numismatic Portal
Washington University in St. Louis
