The Newman Portal will host a user forum at the Central States show, Thursday, April 27, at the Renaissance Convention Center. This event will be held from 11AM - 1PM in the Serendipity Room. Lunch is included. We will present current status of the Newman Portal, including upcoming features and new content, and solicit user feedback on future direction. Admission is free, but please reserve a spot via email to Len Augsburger, Newman Portal Project Coordinator, at leonard.augsburger@wustl.edu. A similar event at Baltimore in November filled quickly, so please let us know as soon as possible if you wish to attend.

To visit the Newman Numismatic Portal, see:
www.newmanportal.org

Counting some latercomers, we had about 24 in attendance, including Bruce Smith, Allan Schein, Roger Burdette, Jeff Rock, Erik Goldstein of Colonial Williamsburg, Andy Newman, Maureen Levine, Roger Moore, Jim Glickman Terri Venresca, Gamal Amer and American Numismatic Society Librarian David Hill. After we ordered our lunches, Len opened with a presentation, then I got up to give a deeper dive on some key topics including using the hierarchical menus vs. search terms, the "front end" vs. "back end" (Internet Archive), in-copyright vs. out-of-copyright works, and third-party content vs. content written or curated by NNP.

Jeff Rock opened a discussion of the impacts on the market for out of copyright numismatic literature. Andy Newman answered questions about the origin of the Newman Portal idea, and Eric's strong support for making numismatic information widely and freely available. We closed with some great stories about Eric. I noted that if it had been the evening and we all had drinks in our hand, I'd raise a glass for a toast thanking Eric for his gift to the hobby. We closed with a round of applause and a lengthy to-do list of ideas for new content and software features.

Here are some pictures.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
WAYNE'S NUMISMATIC DIARY: NOVEMBER 6, 2016(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n45a16.html)