What to collect; how to decide?

Dear Nicholas, with what library are you affiliated? We are fortunate to have our library, which, while part of the University of Cincinnati Libraries, is the departmental library of the Classics Department at U.C. The Department for decades has been heavily involved in excavations in Greece,Turkey, and more recently, Italy. Our library supports the teaching and research of the department. One might think that little is new under the sun, and that all has been said that can be said about events that took place several thousand years ago, but my full time job is ferreting out new and sometimes retrospective books to buy for our collection.

 

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There are some areas where competent line drawings give a much better idea of a coin's features than photographs. This is especially true in the case of Byzantine coins of the Palaeologan period. While the types can be astonishing, the slovenly striking and poor preservation of the coins often prevent a clear image in the best photographs. In this case, the line drawings in Bendall and Donald's The Later Palaeologan Coinage and their Billon Trachea of Michael VIII Palaeologos, and more recently, Dochev's Moneti i parichno obrushtenie v Turnovo XII–XIV v. [Coins and the circulation of money in Turnovo twelfth to fourteenth centuries] provide a much better view of the coins than the photos can do.

 

I run a K-12 library system but I’m located at the high school. You should order Koinon; it’s going to be great!

 

I have a colleague and friend who spent some time going over old and obscure academic publications looking for significant discoveries others had missed. He found a number of significant studies with important findings that were published but largely unknown. In fact he claimed that many researchers had missed research that had already been done in their area and would have saved them an enormous amount of work. I have always had great respect for libraries and physical books. While modern technology is convenient, there is in my opinion no substitute for physically searching through old publications.

 

Can you give me the details of Koinon? I can't place it.

 

https://koinonjournal.wordpress.com/

If you guys purchase all the new releases from Archaeopress it would include this, since they are now the publisher.

 

We do, at least all those that deal with the ancient Mediterranean; we don't do Pre -Columbian, for example. I think this is in queue for purchasing, but I'll make certain we pick it up. Thanks for the reference.

 

I haven’t submitted the manuscript yet so it probably won’t be available until mid Fall. But it certainly deals with many Mediterranean cultures!

 

I should look into buying this one. I have to admit I know next to nothing about the non-Classical cultures. On the other hand, I don't need another area to tempt me!

 

Well, we will need to gt it, then. Thanks!

 

I share your thoughts exactly. Browsing the stacks of a library often produces gems one didn't know were there!