NEWMAN NUMISMATIC PORTAL 2020 ANNUAL REPORT

The Newman Numismatic Portal (NNP, available at http://NewmanPortal.org), administered by Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL), is chartered with the mission of making the documents and images of numismatics, especially American numismatics, universally available on a free and forever basis. The Newman Portal site was publicly launched in 2016 and continues to aggressively build its online collections of numismatic books, periodicals, auction sale catalogs, images, and archival materials.

Like everyone else, our major challenge in 2020 has been the COVID epidemic. While much of our activity is virtual and geographically remote, COVID has in particular impacted Newman Portal scanning operations. Newman Portal has previously maintained scanning centers at WUSTL, the American Numismatic Society (ANS) in New York, and at multiple locations of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). All of these operations have been variously impacted.

WUSTL has managed the epidemic well, with a 7-day positivity rate of 0.16% as of this writing. Safety remains the highest priority of the university, and, for this reason, Newman Portal has operated without student scanning since March. We've been able to outsource some of this work to the Internet Archive satellite scanning center at Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, IN. NARA locations remain closed throughout the country, so we've reallocated resources toward the transcription of previously scanned NARA materials, with over 2,000 pieces of correspondence transcribed to date. The situation at ANS is better, with Newman Portal resuming fulltime scanning as of July. NNP acknowledges ANS Executive Director Gilles Bransbourg and Librarian David Hill for their assistance in restarting scanning at ANS.

While scanning activity has been reduced in 2020, the NNP user community has continued to propel site growth, with content contributions often coming in electronic form. Newman Portal today counts a growing number of individuals, groups, and dealers who have contributed content ranging from club publications to auction sale catalogs to self-published works. We've processed material from over 150 such contributors, and it is this outpouring of community support that will sustain Newman Portal as we together build a lasting resource for numismatic research.

NUMISMATIC NEWS
With the assistance of Cliff Mishler and George Cuhaj, Newman Portal is scanning the reference set of Numismatic News held by the Iola Historical Society in Iola, WI. The Numismatic News, launched in 1952, provided weekly coverage of the numismatic field for many years, with current issues published three times monthly. While we do not currently have permission to present this publication with full view, NNP will provide "snippets" in response to search requests, and we are able to share articles with individual users on a fair use basis. Digital preservation is a key part of the NNP mission, and we are thankful to Cliff and George for enabling the scanning of this important record of American numismatics. To date we have scanned 1,177 issues of Numismatic News.

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web