Numismatics Message Board

Hey, I started up an Ancient History group, if anyone wants to join...

Okay, that was me. Sorry.

I actually have had John Melvile Jones for Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology and this semester I have him for Ancient Greek (which i suck at). Great old bloke, I think for honours next year he will be doing a numismatic topic again.

Cool. Maybe we could get you to have him autograph our copies of his books. (The Dictionary of Ancient Greek Coins is a magnificent reference.)

We seem to share a common interest even if there is not a lot of overlap in books. Mine takes a variety of forms, Celtic Gaul, Iberian-Celtic, Roman Gaul, Merovingian, Caroingian, Feudal Tete Chinonaise, early Jetons, Aluminum coins and medals, anything of artistic interest, and books!

I was just reflecting on the fact that one of the most common bibliographic sources in ancient numismatics (at least) is the sale catalog. Research papers routinely cite "Peus" or "Münzen & Medaillen" or "Berk FPL" or something similar. Certainly individual researchers often collect these catalogs, and major research centers (and dealers) do to, and there are even dealers who specialize in selling them. But are they cataloged in regular library collections anywhere? Can we pull up library catalog records for the CNG sales lists anywhere, for example? A search of the LC catalog for "Classical Numismatics group" turns up nothing. These are important research materials, and libraries ought to collect them.

I just searched for "Classical Numismatics Group" in all the libraries available through LibraryThing and came up empty.

These regularly published catalogs should all have ISSNs. Do any of them? Perhaps we could do the scholarly community a favor by recommending this.

Ugh, these library catalogs still have primitive interfaces that don't offer suggestions. The correct name is "Classical NumismatiC Group", and this turns up a few library records, including at LC, although these are cataloged as monographs and appear to be special publications. The UK National Art Library catalog has quite a few CNG catalogs, but all are listed differently -- real bibliographic chaos.

_Coins of Peloponnesos: The BCD Collection_, by Walker and BCD, has no ISBN or ISSN (that I can find.) Which is unfortunate. I consider the catalog the best numismatic book published this year. Most catalogs will lack the numbers and be unrepresented in the libraries that LibraryThing talks to.

The 'correct' solution would be for the ANS library to offer Z39.50 searching. That is unlikely to happen. It might be possible for a 3rd party to write a "shim" for Z39.50 author and title queries that called the ANS library search page and screen-scraped the results.

OK, I just added several coin catalogs to my library catalog manually, in a rough and ready form: Berk, Elsen, Classical Numismatic Group, and Phillips.

These are tough things for library catalogs, because their titles may well change over time, along with place, etc. The way libraries handle this is to establish a "uniform title" that will stand for the whole series, no matter how the details change, and then create "added entries" (catalog pointers) from other versions of the title (maybe "auction catalogue" changed to "auction catalog" and then to "mail bid catalog", etc.).

I just took a look at the ANS catalog; here's a representative CNS entry. It looks to me like these are "amateur" records rather than real library catalog records; i.e., they aren't MARC-based. I believe (though I could be wrong) that Z39.50 generally sits on top of MARC, and so if ANS just has a homebrew database, then Z39.50 access wouldn't be possible. (I'd be glad to be corrected.)

Sounds like we need some professional catalogers to construct some solid MARC records for these titles and insert them into a research library catalog, so others can "copy catalog" (what we do in LT) from those records. The trick there is that to generate good uniform title records you really ought to have the whole series in front of you so you can document exactly how it has changed over time. Very few libraries will be in this position.

Some publication details on many of the well-known auciton catalogs:

http://esty.ancients.info/catalogs/

According to the ANS Newsletter 85 (Winter 2000), the ANS library uses MARC records. See http://www.numismatics.org/newsletter/number85/ and scroll to where it says "Catalogue Conversion Complete and Online".

A brief note on the "North American Serials Interest Group" Newsletter describes the work the (now-former) catalogers does at the ANS library: We don’t use LCSH, even though we follow AACR2 and MARC21; instead, we have a homegrown thesaurus geared specifically to the complexities of numismatics and the needs of our users. We are not tied into OCLC or RLIN. Cataloging is done on a stand-alone system called MARC Magician, which loads into our locally created OPAC." http://www.nasig.org/newsletters/newsletters.2005/05may/05may_title_changes.html .

(I don't know what some of the acronyms mean.)

Anyone interested in the complexities of auction catalog titles over time will enjoy the Fitzwilliam Museum's list of auction catalogs. They have 30,000 catalogs in seven huge text files. They don't acquire catalogs with just modern coins but they are nearly complete for ancient and medieval. Their format makes it easy to see a catalog series at a glance rather than searching through ANS for individual records. http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/coins/library/salescatalogue/

The Fitzwilliam listing is remarkable -- thanks for the link.

So it sounds like ANS does have their collection MARC-cataloged, but what they have is a homebrew OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog). And it makes sense that they have a specialist set of subject headings, but if these are entered into the standard MARC fields then they should be retrievable with other software. OCLC and RLIN are library consortia; OCLC is the main source behind worldcat, which is the basis of the "find in a library" feature in LT. In other words, the ANS catalog is really isolated from the global library network. I don't know what is involved in getting Z39.50 access to a catalog; it may be built in to the ANS software or it may not.

I haven't checked to see if the Fitzwilliam library is in the Cambridge University catalog.

I never thought of listing my catalogs, but its obvious that they are part of my library. I note that rjohara has an entry for the basic catalog (Elsen for example). One entry for your entire run or an entry for each catalog with them grouped as a work? If you look at the Fitzwilliam site (and think about it for a moment), you do want a record of which volumes you have (e.g. 73-78,80-83). The comments or other fields could be used to maintain the information. With some catalogs, there are good reason to list the catalog as its own entry because of a specialized collect or topic (the Garrett collection, a CGB sale of Feudal coins that became its own publication, versus the Elsen catalogs that are a list of coins rarely with a focus). Thoughts?

This may seem disingenuous, but when does the U.S. Mint release new coins for the year? I've been looking at the USPS link, but only 2016 coins are still showing up as available.

The US Mint product schedule can be seen at https://catalog.usmint.gov/product-schedule/?view=all&_ga=1.183962470.174476...

The coins are not all released at once.

Thank you! Best beloved's birthday is coming up.

An update - I gave best beloved beekeeper a quarter ounce American eagle for his birthday. He seemed pleased with it since he kept carrying it around until I finallly convinced him to put it in the safe. Thanks for the guidance.