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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 4511214, member: 93416&quot;]I think I know why this was going on – but I am open to correction. Here is my story</p><p><br /></p><p>Way back in time I worked in head office operations in a big semi-public organisation. My number skills were OK - so I got seconded into a head office finance project. While there I discovered a secret. Regional offices thought their computerised financial data was private to themselves, but head office had a back door into their data - that regions did not know about. I was in a team of two – we drove round regional offices asking questions my partner already knew the answers to – to see who told the truth.</p><p><br /></p><p>I think that is the sort of thing Burger (and presumably Gorny) are looking at. The idea that ahead of distributing mother cash to regional mints very subtle variations were added to each one – so that central government could secretly check up on what was going on at provincial mints. I should add that I have doubts in two ways about this, both whether it happened, and also, whether it worked if it was happening…….</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Yep – been there - and more than twice. I will just run through events in one case – in part because a lot of details concerning my criticisms already went public on a different group. I should warn that what follows in part derives from something like gossip, but from people who were in a position to know.</p><p><br /></p><p>Its well known Steve Album sold his personal Islamic collection to Tuebingen. And that the money came from Volkswagen. I was also told Album considered the job of curating it himself, but Tuebingen demanded a German scholar.&nbsp; In the end Lutz Ilisch got the curating job, but with a committee overseeing his work, which included Michael Bates. The aim became to divide the collection up according to geographical zones and farm different parts out to specialist scholars. I think the project is still ongoing.</p><p><br /></p><p>My criticism concerned the organisation of the material. All prior catalogues (BM, Mitchiner) were organised by dynasty. Most experienced collectors could quickly figure out what (say) an Omayyad dirhem looked like, and in earlier catalogues, you just went to that dynasty and started looking. Not so in the Tuebingen catalogue. Omayyad dirhems were split up and dispersed geographically over many projected volumes. A pattern repeated for all dynasties as each catalogue associated a few 9th century coins with a few 19th century coins by town, disregarding the fact the 19th century coins had almost no feature in common with the Omayyad issues aside from the mint name. To find your Omayyad coin you would have to buy many huge volumes and perhaps look in them all.</p><p><br /></p><p>Shortly after that the Ashmolean head hunted Album to bring out its own set of Islamic catalogues – that were organised traditionally by dynasty. And Album brought out his own Checklist – again organised by dynasty.</p><p><br /></p><p>Early on I got into correspondence with the publisher of the Tuebingen work concerning getting a discount for taking three copies of one volume. They were rather sniffy about the idea. Curiously though, more than 10 years after - my name was dug out of the file and I got a letter asking why I was not buying further volumes. Perhaps sales were not going too well?</p><p><br /></p><p>I should add that I have the highest regard for Lutz Ilisch, a man of great knowledge, a teacher of professors, although to my knowledge, never a professor himself.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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