Virtual coin cabinet - cooperative development and use of object data from coin collections.

KENOM ("Cooperative development and use of object data from coin collections") is an online portal for numismatics that offers worldwide, free and uncomplicated access to digitized objects and content-related information on coins, paper money, medals and numerous other numismatic objects.

The competence network KENOM provides a working environment that makes it possible to digitally record numismatic holdings, to examine them cooperatively and across borders and to make them accessible for research and the public. Museums, libraries and universities as well as monument preservation and numismatic institutions are involved.

Conception

KENOM significantly increases the digital presentation of scientifically processed numismatic sources. It enables the development of numerous stocks that were previously only accessible to specialists. Numismatic objects that are poorly or not at all publicly accessible can be documented and presented using KENOM at a high quality and reusable level. Especially in the case of extensive museum collections with several thousand exhibits and coin finds from a large number of archaeological activities, KENOM allows the holdings to be easily searched through and presented to a broad public interested in the history of coins and money. As an open access database, KENOM also simplifies transnational scientific work.

KENOM provides an indexing model that is based on national and international standards and offers access to established standard vocabulary. The technical framework conditions ensure high quality and enable broad coverage, even for medium-sized and smaller institutions that do not have their own specialist staff. Metadata is based on the international data format "Lightweight Information Describing Objects (LIDO)". The presentation of the images in the IIIF standard ensures good interoperable reusability. The networking and integration of different collections and collection types is essential for KENOM. The model standard established in this way for the digital indexing of numismatic collections forms the basis for a global network of digital collections. In Germany, KENOM supplies data for digital cultural portals of the federal states such as Kulturerbe Niedersachsen, bavarikon or Kulthura and the portals of the collections of the Universities of Göttingen and Jena as well as the archaeological state offices/state museums in Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. KENOM also provides data for the German Digital Library.

Emergence

The founding of KENOM is related to funding by the German Research Foundation as part of the initiative "Development and Digitization of Object-Related Scientific Collections" (2010). This provided the impetus for a cooperative project application for the development of numismatic collections, which was jointly submitted by the central office of the joint library network in Göttingen, the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover, the Archaeological Institute of the Georg-August University in Göttingen, the Schleswig-Holstein State Library, the Thuringian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and Archeology and the Numismatic Commission of the States in Germany (represented by the Moritzburg Foundation, Art Museum of the State of Saxony-Anhalt, Halle) in 2011. At the end of April 2012, the application for a 24-month pilot project was approved. The starting gun was fired on November 1, 2012. The KENOM portal was activated for the first time in May 2015. After the end of the DFG funding, KENOM has developed into an important part of Germany-wide numismatics on the Internet, winning many new partners and putting their holdings online be able.

Project Partner

KENOM is forward-looking due to the large-scale cross-border network of numismatic institutions. In addition to the founding members, the project has gained many other partners over the past few years: you can find an up-to-date overview of all the institutions represented in the KENOM portal here. Of particular note is the cooperation with the Numismatic Association in Baden-Württemberg, which was founded in 2016 and built its online portal on the basis of KENOM. The diversity of the institutions involved in KENOM is reflected in the objects: from antiquity to modern times, from the Orient to the Occident - the spectrum is broad. The partners meet twice a year to evaluate and further develop the portal. As a cooperative association, KENOM is also networked with other numismatic portals and provides e.g. B. the ancient coins or medals of the 1st World War ready for the different type portals such as OCRE, CRRO, SCO, PCO and AOD of the American Numismatic Society. There is a constant, mutual dialogue and exchange with the Berlin Coin Cabinet and the numismatic research and digitization association NUMiD, especially in the area of ​​numismatic standard data.

The Numismatic Commission of the Federal States in the Federal Republic of Germany uses KENOM for their catalog of finds from the Middle Ages/Modern Period, so that extensive stocks of find coins can also be recorded here in cooperation with partners from monument preservation. In the case of found coins, in contrast to collection coins, the place where they were found is known and, in the best case, there is an archaeological context. Therefore, when a coin is found, information about the place where it was found and the archaeological context must be submitted together with the coin. This turns the coin into an archaeological object, which is a source of equal importance alongside ceramics or other genres. With this content extension of KENOM, the database fields were adjusted and those of other projects (e.g. AFE, NV BW) were aligned in such a way that data exchange between the various partners is possible without any problems via interfaces.

Presentation

Numismatics is a "bridging subject" with links to numerous historical related disciplines such as archaeology, political, economic, art, mentality and settlement history as well as for everyday life in past epochs. In addition, coins are in many ways a highly significant part of cultural heritage. Via the "virtual coin cabinet", KENOM allows access to magazine holdings that were previously only available to selected specialists. With high-resolution images, a large number of metadata and extensive documentation and indexing of important coin, medal and banknote collections, KENOM is a wide-ranging research database for everyone interested in numismatics.

Participation

Participation in KENOM is open to all numismatic collections. A platform-independent work environment is offered in which the stocks can be digitally recorded as data sets, post-processed, supplemented and published via a presentation portal. The basis is the database easydb.museum from the company Programmfabrik, Berlin. The presentation environment, the "Virtual Coin Cabinet", is provided on the basis of the Goobi Viewer from intranda, Göttingen.

Coordination and contact person:

Mario Schlapke (content coordination)
Thuringian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and Archaeology
Humboldtstrasse 11
99423 Weimar
Phone: +49(0)361 57 3223 322
Email: Mario.schlapke@tlda.thueringen.de
Internet: https://www.thueringen.de/th1/denkmalpflege/index.aspx

dr Susanne Börner (content coordination)
Heidelberg