More reliable recommended reading: The U.S. Mint and Coinage by Don Taxay The Secret History of the First U.S. Mint by Joel J. Orosz and Leonard D. Augsburger Other recommendations?
No Don't overlook the value of books. Building a numismatic library has great value to the collector.
If one were to only rely on what they can find on-line, their information would be sadly lacking, and more than a bit of it completely inaccurate.
The root of the problem being that the 'missing and correct' stuff is not on line. An excellent argument for MORE things being digitized and put online.
Oh Darn At the end of the video there were more short clips and I found the blooper one of the Big Bang theory. It was funny . Sorry I went off script.
Ahhh, but if they did that, and you had to pay for it just like you have to pay for a book, would you pay for it ? edit - Also, what happens when that web site where you found the info you wanted goes defunct ? What do you do then ? Books do not go defunct, once you have them, you have them forever. You don't have to worry about the info you want/need not being there at some point in the future.
You can pretty much download web sites. I have already archived many pages of interest so I can use them off line.
Yeah I know, I have many gigabytes of files that I have saved over the years. But very few people do that, and those that do soon find out what a huge chore it is to manage such a resource. Instead, most will save bookmarks to web pages or sites, I have thousands of those too. I even took the time years ago to build a special section here on the forum for others - http://www.cointalk.com/forums/numismatic-resources.33/ But none of it can replace books. And that is because there is just too much in books that is not on any web site. The books are the only place you can get the information, the knowledge. And that is what we are after is it not - knowledge ? So why not go to the source ? But you have not answered my question, if the information in the books were made available on-line, would you pay for it ? Yes or no ?
Depends on the pricing structure. What I'd like to see is when you buy a book you get a digital copy as well for your access convenience, I'd even give them the $/GB as an add on. Then, I'd probably never open the book anyway. Too much of the book is in the paper and what not. Royalty fee + digitization and transmission should be very affordable.
Yes that is true if you are talking about a book with a printing with thousands or even hundreds of thousands of copies. And or with books thay have been printed recently. But with most numismatic books there are 500 or less copies every printed. I have some where there were only 150 copies ever printed. And most numismatic books were not printed recently. Then there is the issue of how many end users do you have, or can you have ? Numismatic books are highly specialized which results in few end users. And the number of people who even use electronic readers is still minuscule compared to the number of people who prefer paper books. So even if the book were digitized there would be very few who would ever buy it. So the cost of digitizing a numismatic book is not offset. At some time in the future this will change. It is already starting, but we are not there yet. We still have a long way to go. So paper numismatic books remain the only viable alternative.
As a further argument for paper books, once its in a permanent book format you have the ability to read critiques of them. Yes, many numismatic books are not terribly good. However, if you inform yourself you can learn from people smarter than I which books are wonderful, and which are not worth reading. Where is that type of critical feedback on the internet? Truly any idiot can write anything he wishes online, and a lot of people will believe him. Even though Wikipedia has a lot of good entries, I have attempted to correct quite a few very bad and misleading entries there myself, only to have others who "really think they are right" go back and wipe out my corrections of their errors. So, if you wish to read and believe bad, error filled information, go ahead and believe everything you read on the internet. If you wish to have information you can rely on, you have to pay for that privilege. The internet is great for sharing pictures, and finding another coin that looks like yours. However, I simply find TONS and TONS of misattributed coins online. If you do not own what they are attributing the coin to, (the book), you will never know your attribution is complete nonsense.
