Up until about 1979, collecting numismatic books was a haphazard affair:
"The hobby of numismatics first reached a critical mass in America just prior to the Civil War, and many of the early coin hounds were literature collectors as well. Men such as John W. Kline, Ferguson Haines, and William Poillon went far beyond the requirements of basic references to collect books and catalogs for their own sake. The high water mark of 19th century numismatic bibliomania came in 1876, with the publication of Emmanuel Joseph Attinelli's superb bibliography of numismatic auction catalogs, Numisgraphics. Then came the bibliophile's dark night of the printed word; interest in the literature gradually declined after the nation's centennial, and during the first five decades of the 20th century, it was hard to find an American coin collector who cared a fig for books, catalogs, or periodicals except for the sake of pure reference."
Few articles were published about the importance of numismatists collecting numismatic books. Likewise, few articles were published suggesting that numismatists consider a private library of such books.
There were a few auctions which featured numismatic literature. A few books were published regarding numismatic literature in institutional collections. And a small number of bibliographies, some of them specific to a particular numismatic specialty, were published.
In 1979, at the annual convention of the American Numismatic Association--held that year in St. Louis, Missouri--a dozen collectors of numismatic books "gathered for a dinner and discussed forming an organization for numismatic book and catalog collectors." From that meeting, an organization devoted specifically to collecting numismatic books was born: The Numismatic Bibliomania Society. Though it would endure numerous controversies, and come close to extinguishing its own existence on several occasions, with the birth of the NBS numismatic book collectors at long last had some "cred."
In 1985, Elvira Clain-Stefanelli, Executive Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Numismatic Collection, published the most comprehensive modern bibliography of numismatic literature that had been attempted to that date, her Numismatic Bibliography.
While this is purely speculation on the part of your blogger, the publication of this truly comprehensive modern general numismatic bibliography, coming on the heels of the birth of an organization devoted to numismatic book collecting, both events taking place during a resurgence in numismatic collecting of all types (during the 1970s and 1980s), seems to have created a "perfect storm" for a renaissance in numismatic publishing. Certainly, no work since Clain-Stefanelli has attempted to capture within the pages of a single book everything that has been published in the modern numismatic era in every numismatic specialty. There simply is too much being published.
In some ways, this is a Golden Age for the collector of numismatic literature. One simply has to figure out some way to sort the "must have" books and articles from the "maybes." There are several ways to do this.
In 1999, your blogger began to create for the NBS a checklist of important titles in various numismatic specialties that would update Clain-Stefanelli. Time and other constraints made it impossible to finish the task, though the few components that were published now form the basis of the NBS Numismatic Bibliography. Thankfully, this bibliography is now being published as a wiki so anyone can update it. Hopefully, this eventually will lead to a checklist that is both comprehensive and current (it presently does not cover U.S. numismatic literature at all; nor does it cover articles in periodicals or journals, which is where original numismatic research often first appears; nor does it cover anything not in the English language; and the last time your blogger updated it was in 2005).
The American Numismatic Society has, since 1947, published an annual compendium called, appropriately enough, Numismatic Literature:
"Until the late 1960s this was compiled by the ANS librarians and based largely on ANS library acquisitions. In 1967 the International Numismatic Commission assumed patronage of the publication and formalized a system of international editors that continues today. The titles and abstracts are submitted either by the authors themselves or by one of nearly 40 international editors who are themselves well-known numismatists. Each volume contains an author and a subject index, cross-references, a listing of the sources for book reviews, and an obituary section.
Numismatic Literature has been published quarterly from 1947 to 67, semi-annually from 1968 to 1999, and irregularly since 2000."
Another publication that may help numismatic book collectors figure out what to buy for their bookshelves is A Survey of Numismatic Research. First published in 1953 for the International Numismatic Congress, and published roughly every five years since (during each succeeding conference), the next volume in this survey is due out in 2009.
The really comprehensive bibliographies for numismatic book collectors have taken a turn in recent years toward specific specialties. In addition to the two Dekesel bibliographies mentioned in our post of April 29, two especially notable such bibliographies are the recently published Canadian Numismatic Bibliography and W. E. Daehn's Ancient Greek Numismatics, A Guide to Reading and Research: A Bibliography of Works Written in English with Summaries of Their Contents.
With titles like the above at hand, the individual building a private library of numismatic books should be well on his or her way to putting together an enviable collection....
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