September 24, 2015 – The Newman Numismatic Portal seeks to unite the world’s numismatic information into a single, searchable database, accessible to all on a free and forever basis. Administered through Washington University in St. Louis, the Portal is funded by a grant from the Eric P. Newman Numismatic Education Society and began development in December 2014.
This summer has been busy with the establishment of a scanning center, located in Olin Library on the Washington University campus. Since June, several hundred documents have been scanned, representing over 30,000 pages, and these are visible through Internet Archive. The project has partnered with Internet Archive to upload and host the scanned material, and this collection will increase on a daily basis as items are added.
While Internet Archive acts as a warehouse for the scanned documents, the project is in parallel developing the website that will be known as the Newman Numismatic Portal. The Portal will be able to search across the scanned documents as well as a store of electronic content acquired from other sources such as auction companies. The Portal will go online in 2016. In the meantime, the scanned material, via Internet Archive, is freely available to all for scholarly purposes.
The team working on this project is especially interested in acquiring in-copyright content for the Portal. If you represent an organization that wishes to digitize its publications at no cost to you, they offer you to offload the scanning effort. Already several specialty clubs within American numismatics have given the permission to digitize and present back issues of their journals. The project also seeks unique materials such as manuscripts, archives, bid books, and the like. Finally, several collectors have loaned rare items such as early U.S. Mint Reports. It is through such collaboration that the Portal will achieve its objective of sharing numismatic information with all.
To visit the website of the Newman Numismatic Portal please click here.