Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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br<strong>in</strong>gs up images of the co<strong>in</strong> along with basic descriptive <strong>in</strong>formation. There is no way, however, to
search the collection of co<strong>in</strong>s. F<strong>in</strong>ally, another useful resource is the “Virtual Catalog of Roman Co<strong>in</strong>s”
(VCRC) 445 a website ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong>ed by Robert W. Cape, Jr., associate professor of classics, Aust<strong>in</strong>
College, and “devoted to help<strong>in</strong>g students and teachers learn more about ancient Roman co<strong>in</strong>s.” This
website conta<strong>in</strong>s co<strong>in</strong> images and descriptions from the early Roman Republic through the end of the
fourth century AD. The VCRC can be searched by either a general keyword search or by co<strong>in</strong> issuer,
obverse or reverse description, <strong>in</strong>scription, and contributor. S<strong>in</strong>ce the VCRC was designed as an
educational resource it also <strong>in</strong>cludes a list of student projects and teach<strong>in</strong>g resources.
Some numismatic research databases that once had <strong>in</strong>dividual websites have been archived by the
ADS. One example is “Analysis of Roman Silver Co<strong>in</strong>s: Augustus to Nero (27 B.C. – AD 69),” 446 a
project conducted <strong>in</strong> 2005 by Matthew Pont<strong>in</strong>g and Kev<strong>in</strong> Butcher at the University of Liverpool. The
research database <strong>in</strong>cludes numismatic descriptions of co<strong>in</strong>s and pictures, and can be queried by
denom<strong>in</strong>ation, m<strong>in</strong>t, emperor, hoard, or donor. This website illustrates the importance of access to
digital preservation services for <strong>in</strong>dividual faculty research projects once they are completed.
Numismatic Data Integration and Digital Publication
As <strong>in</strong>dicated by this overview, there are numerous numismatics databases, many of which have
collections of overlapp<strong>in</strong>g time periods and geography but all of which provide vary<strong>in</strong>g levels of
access through different types of database <strong>in</strong>terfaces and utilize various schemas, often with an
extensive number of different fields/elements that describe the same data items <strong>in</strong> different databases.
Some of the challenges of <strong>in</strong>tegrat<strong>in</strong>g such collections have been explored by D’Andrea and
Niccolucci (2008). These authors exam<strong>in</strong>ed data-harmonization efforts us<strong>in</strong>g the CIDOC-CRM
ontology and described <strong>in</strong>itial efforts to map three different numismatics databases to the CIDOC-
CRM and to develop a “general numismatic reference model.” Similarly, the CLAROS project has
used CIDOC-CRM to provide federated search<strong>in</strong>g to various classical art databases.
This lack of a common standard schema for numismatic databases is not surpris<strong>in</strong>g as there is a similar
lack of standards for both the catalog<strong>in</strong>g and analysis of co<strong>in</strong>s with<strong>in</strong> pr<strong>in</strong>ted publications <strong>in</strong> this field,
accord<strong>in</strong>g to a recent article by Kris Lockyear (Lockyear 2007). In his overview of the record<strong>in</strong>g and
analysis of Roman co<strong>in</strong>s <strong>in</strong> Brita<strong>in</strong>, Lockyear also criticized the English Heritage guidel<strong>in</strong>es that had
recently been released for describ<strong>in</strong>g co<strong>in</strong>s. One of the major problems, Lockyear suggested, was the
identification of co<strong>in</strong>s, for without a “well-preserved genu<strong>in</strong>e co<strong>in</strong>,” even extensive patience and us<strong>in</strong>g
the 10 volumes of Roman Imperial Co<strong>in</strong>age did not necessarily provide a scholar with a dist<strong>in</strong>ct
catalog number along with a date range, place of manufacture, and denom<strong>in</strong>ation. Lockyear noted,
however, that detailed analysis of sites required <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g not just well-identified co<strong>in</strong>s but all the co<strong>in</strong>s
found, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g those that were poorly preserved. To address this issue, a series of “co<strong>in</strong>-issue
periods” were created so that co<strong>in</strong>s could at least be assigned to a period and summary list<strong>in</strong>gs could be
created of the co<strong>in</strong>s at a site. There are currently two such schemes used <strong>in</strong> Brita<strong>in</strong>, and conversion
between them typically requires a full catalog of the co<strong>in</strong>s found, Lockyear reported, but unfortunately,
many pr<strong>in</strong>ted publications <strong>in</strong>clude only partial catalogs of site f<strong>in</strong>ds.
Lockyear expla<strong>in</strong>ed that the English Heritage guidel<strong>in</strong>es suggested three levels of catalog<strong>in</strong>g: a full
catalog with detailed <strong>in</strong>formation; a shorter catalog of the full one; or a “spreadsheet” that is typically a
summary of data by co<strong>in</strong> periods. The m<strong>in</strong>imum data to be <strong>in</strong>cluded was co<strong>in</strong> identification accord<strong>in</strong>g
445 http://vcrc.aust<strong>in</strong>college.edu/
446 http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/archive/co<strong>in</strong>s_lt_2005/<strong>in</strong>dex.cfmCFID=3825887&CFTOKEN=59064527