Procedure of Data Entry for McMaster University Roman Coins Project

The purpose of this document is to provide a procedure and guide for data entry for the Roman Coins Project, so that further work and supplement may have a basis from which to work. The standard and form for data entry was established by Donald Sheehan, while the project as a whole was developed by a team of faculty, students and curators. For a detailed list of credits, see http://arendt.mcmaster.ca/%7Ecoins/credits.php. The following process describes the method by which coin data may be entered onto the McMaster Museum of Art Roman Coin Collection.

The data for all of the Roman coins in the Bruce Brace Collection, both republican and imperial, have complete notes that have been generated on cards by Mr. Brace himself. The data provided details the coin’s accession number, material and denomination, chronology, catalogue references (scholarship), mint, description of reverse and obverse, diameter, weight, die axis, provenance and general notes, all for which there is an appropriate field in the database.

The creation, updating, displaying and deleting of entries may be performed from any computer with basic internet access. One only requires the username and password to access the Roman Coins Collection at the arendt server (http://arendt.mcmaster.ca/~coins/login?out=1). Old entries are listed in order of accession number, and may be updated, displayed or deleted by accessing “edit entries.” To create a new entry, simply access “new entry.” Once in either “new entry” or “edit entries,” the data entry fields are accessible. Denomination, material and time period (BCE or CE) may be selected from a prearranged list, while the remaining fields require manual entries. The data fields for accession number, accession date, mint, Crawford/RIC year, year, weight, diameter and die axis may contain only numbers or letters, depending upon the field. It must also be stressed that every field must have some kind of entry before one saves the work by clicking on “submit.”

Accession number and date, denomination, material, mint, CE/BCE, weight and diameter will appear on the specific webpage for each coin as they appear in the data field. For die axis, one must estimate the degree of difference indicated on the coin cards, with differences in the axes appearing by degrees of ten. For example, if both arrows face exactly opposite directions, enter “180” in the die axis field. “Crawford/RIC Year” will not appear on the specific coin webpage, but will indicate the coin’s time period on the coin lists accessed through the search or timeline. The entry for “Year” will not appear anywhere, but will determine into which period of the timeline the coin should be placed.

The remaining data fields often require both text and numbers. The size of the fields has been enlarged by Harold Sikkema in 2007 to provide one with greater ease in entering and reviewing entries. Any reference or mention of scholarly work must contain within it a link to the Bibliography section of the Glossary page (http://arendt.mcmaster.ca/%7Ecoins/glossary.php). All references to specific numismatic and/or Classical terminology that is not immediately explained must also contain links to the Glossary page. The generating of links as well as use of bullets, line breaks, italicized and bold text must be done according to standard html language. A helpful guide to these standards may be found at http://w3schools.com/tags/.