21. Mai 2012
Meeting of Curators of ancient Greek coinage, 21 May 2012 in Berlin
The American Numismatic Society, represented at the meeting by Andrew Meadows and Ethan Gruber, has invested heavily in digital documentation of their holdings since the 1980s. All ancient coins are available in the online catalogue with at least a basic description. For the last three years the Society has undertaken an intensive and expensive campaign of digital photography with the aim of providing increasing numbers of coins with pictures. The Society has also committed itself to the establishment of clean, stable URIs for all its object records. The ANS is also now supporting initiatives to create databases of Greek and Roman coin hoards. ANS staff has also been instrumental in the establishment of a project to create stable identities for numismatic concepts on the Web. The site devoted to this project is hosted by the ANS. – Collection database of Greek Coins – The Inventory of Greek Coin Hoards – Stable identities for numismatic concepts The Department of Coins and Medals of the British Museum, represented by Amelia Dowler, has made its inventory available online. About 30% of the 100,000 Greek coins are fully documented and provided with pictures. The rest are ‘skeletal’, but include mint, authority (where known) metal and usually weight. The Catalogue of Greek coins is integrated into the comprehensive Catalogue of over two million objects of the British Museum. – British Museum Database The Département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, represented by Michel Amandry and Frédérique Duyrat, is about to undergo extensive renovation work. In preparation for this reorganization a digital catalogue of the collection is being created, which will be linked to photographic documentation of all Greek coins. These images will be published with some key information online. A selection of objects is already available in an image database. – Database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France – Library Catalog The Münzkabinett of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, represented by Klaus Vondrovec, currently uses an Access database to document its ancient coin collection. For each of the 45,000 Greek coins, there is a record. In addition, a database of Parthian coins, created in connection with the on going Parthian project has been developed in which contains records of the coins of the five institutions involved. The publication of the database on the World Wide Web is envisaged. The Numismatic Collection of the State Museums of Berlin, represented by Bernhard Weisser, Karsten Dahmen, Angela Berthold, Timo Stingl and Jürgen Freundel has created its own database for collection documentation. It also uses its own Web database, the Interactive Catalogue of the Numismatic Collection (ikmk) for the publication of the collection records, which are characterized by depth of content, clarity and high quality of photographs. In recent years, the records of 3’790 Greek coins have been released. During the next three years projects for Thracian and Parthian coins are planned. – Interactive Catalogue of the numismatic Collection The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, represented by Ulrike Peter and Markus Schnöpf, has in the past three years in a joint project with the Institute of Art History in Florence (Max-Planck-Institute) and the Numismatic Collection of the State Museums of Berlin, success fully launched a digital database (‘Translatio Nummorum’) of coins from Julius Caesar to Domitian referred to in the antiquarian literature of the Renaissance. The Academy, home of the «Griechisches Münzwerk» project founded by Theodor Mommsen, has an extensive collection of casts and documentation related to the Greek coins of Thrace. Over the next three years, in collaboration with the Numismatic Collection of the State Museums of Berlin, and hopefully other partners, an online portal will be developed devoted to Thrace. – Translatio Nummorum
Author: Elise Walther