Thank you for this info, Jordan. Crawford is essential for the Roman Republic collector, and the hardcovers are not easy to use with coins laid out nearby.
I wish numismatic literature was routinely created in quality-equivalent multiple formats. Print limits the image quality of any photo, so formats that can provide highest quality images should be the primary delivery mechanism.
I totally agree. I understand that piracy is largely the reason that publishers of books like
RRC don't provide digital copies but I'd certainly pay extra for a high
quality digital copy. Even a so-so digital copy is useful for me when traveling for
work or to visit family so in some cases I've scanned important papers such as Russo's on unpublished bronzes for my own personal use, but of course digital would be preferred.
In lieu of a
good digital copy of
Crawford my strategy for plates for my own research has been building my own digital photofile from many of the same sources. Some of the images in it are just scans of old catalogues and things but between the RBW and JD
collection catalogs and the online archives of the
BNF and the BM as well as a few private collectors who have shared images of
rare types with me I've managed to find
good digital images of quite a few coins and it includes many
types not in
Crawford so is more useful in that regard and being digital it is much easier(at least for me) to compare dies.