Amen! And, though we don't know exactly how it will eventuate, we are in the midst of a huge, universal change in the transmission of knowledge. Everything Doug says about
Wikipedia is perfectly true, in my opinion. Only a child or the stereotype of a "C student" expects every article to be perfectly correct, anywhere. Articles in
RE and Roscher and Daremberg & Saglio also vary according to their authors. More so in
LIMC. One thing about
Wikipedia, in the present 'best of all possible worlds' is that learned specialists, whose articles might be
reduced to a couple of sentences or the subject itself eliminated, on the specious grounds that "nobody" will be interested in them (ask anyone who ever tried to write a textbook, too) is its inclusiveness, thanks to the availability of practically unlimited storage. The great thing about
Google (and other) projects to scan all great libraries is its inclusion of numismatic journals that most of us would have
had to travel thousands of miles to consult (or wait a month for a
library willing to send it to be found) is its saving things that less enlightened persons, who might have authority, would trash because 'nobody' wants to consult them. Most of what I consult at the local university
library is (when they have it) what 'nobody' wants.
Google and Wiki and I and my friends are happy to be 'nobody'.
An unfortunate fact is that the 20c generated so much more printed matter than ever before that it has exceeded the capacities for hard-copy storage. This while a sort of pseudo-populism dictates that only the numerical majority of humanity, in political and economic terms, is ever right. Yet this year, a little but not insignificant, article of mine has gone to press and, just too late, CA has announced (as Adobe did ages ago) an academic-salary priced edition, so that a coin that Loebbecke listed in 1885 and of which the
sole known specimen was sold by M&M (
Cahn) in 1970 and again by a consortium at a NY sale more recently,
had to be discussed without any link to
any image of it. I am sure that CA and the scholar-neglecting dealers will repent and release a link just barely too late (it is too late now). Perhaps after we're all dead
Google will put the little journal on line, where an emendation can be made.
Pat L.
