Friday, September 18, 2015

The American Numismatic Society Introduces Digital Library

The American Numismatic Society (ANS) continues its mission of providing Open Access research tools to researchers worldwide with its newly unveiled Digital Library (http://numismatics.org/digitallibrary). The ANS Digital Library will grow to house three collections of digital material: numismatic theses/dissertations, auction catalogues, and ebooks.

Beginning now, the collection of electronic theses and dissertations hosts international doctoral work on numismatic themes. Anyone may browse the collection online, and are welcome to download any PDF or DOC file containing the research that earned their authors their MAs and/or PhDs. The ANS has seeded this space with the work of its own staff, and welcome any/all theses from numismatists, archaeologists, historians, and other scholars worldwide.

Andrew Reinhard, Director of Publications for the ANS, discussed the reasoning behind creating the collection. “Many numismatic doctoral theses and dissertations are never published, or they appear only in print that is accessible to very few people. The ANS is already an international destination for Open Access numismatic data, so it seemed logical that we also could be a hub for hosting advanced, groundbreaking numismatic scholarship.”

If you would like to have the ANS host and distribute your thesis or dissertation at no charge under a Creative Commons license, email the file(s) or link(s) to areinhard@numismatics.org. Once your work is uploaded, the ANS will publish its link, and will also create an entry in the DONUM library catalogue to aid discoverability.

Over the next few months, the ANS will begin to share freely its scanned auction catalogues as well as ebook versions of its monographs and series on this Digital Library platform.

For more information, contact Andrew Reinhard, Director of Publications, at 212-571-4470 ext. 111 or areinhard@numismatics.org.