This week I made a whirlwind trip to the Central States Numismatic Society show. Wednesday was a regular workday, and at 2:30 I was glad to be able to duck out and say, "Sorry - I've gotto catch a plane." I told a coworker, "Pray for me - I'm on United." Thankfully, the worst thing to happen was while having a turkey wrap sandwich for dinner before boarding - thefirst half was great, but the other half rolled off my lap onto the floor. Oh, well.

I got back in my car and headed to Dulles Airport. After a thankfully uneventful flight and taxi ride I checked into my room at the Renaissance Shaumburg Convention Hotel around 7:30 and textedLen Augsburger - we were planning to meet up to discuss Newman Numismatic Portal issues. I took some photos to show my kids.

We talked for a bit in the lobby, then got a table at the hotel bar. We had a lot of topics to cover and didn't split up until about 10 local time.

The next morning, still on eastern time, I got up around 5:30. After breakfast I worked on The E-Sylum in my room until 10:30, when I met Len in the Serenity Room. He was already setting uphis presentation for the Newman Numismatic Portal meeting at 11.

One slight problem - Len had ordered lunch for everyone, but the room had only chairs, no tables. A quick call to Bourse Chairman Kevin Foley solved the problem (the hotel had dropped the ball).Thanks, Kevin!

While workers reconfigured the room setup I spoke to some of the earlybirds, including Paul Hybert, Andy Newman, Bob Leonard, Beth Deisher, NBS webmaster Bruce Perdue, and Ute Wartenburg Kagin,Executive Director of the American Numismatic Society.

Other attendees included David Lisot, Pete Smith, Cliff Mischler, Maureen Levine, Bill Bierly, Harry Waterson, Mark Verbeek, Bill Burd, Shanna Schmidt, Mary Lannin, and David Finkelstein.

Front row: Pete Smith, Paul Hybert, Ray Lockwood
Second row: Shanna Schmidt, Mary Lanin, Bill Burd, Bob Leonard
Third row: Andy Newman, Maureen Levine, Beth Deisher, Harry Waterson, Cliff Mishler
Back wall (standing): David Finkelstein, David Lisot (Seated): Mark Verbeck, Gerry Tebben.

I warmed up the crowd with an overview of several ways to look at the portal - curated content "Encyclopedia" vs. uncurated "bulk" content, scanned vs. digital content,front-end "retail store" vs. back end "warehouse", and accessing content via menus or search. I also touched on the history of our digitization partner, Internet Archive.

Len delivered the main presentation, a combination of PowerPoint slides and live demo of the site in action. He covered new content partners, our scanning centers in St. Louis and New York, andnew advanced search features. He also showed a video of a scanner operator in action.

A productive question-and-answer session followed next. Topics included the quality of our optical character recognition (it's very good), non-U.S. content (not a priority now, but we'lltake it), and what turned out to be a bug report (we'll fix it - in certain cases users would only get a maximum of 50 search results even when more were available.

Next it was time for lunch - box lunches and soft drinks were available for everyone. I met E-Sylum advertiser Shanna Schmidt and E-Sylum contributor Harry Waterson for the firsttime, spoke with Mary Lannin, Maureen Levine, Pete Smith and Andy Newman. After the room cleared out Len and I met for a while with Andy about various NNP topics.

I went back up to my room to check email, change into more comfortable traveling attire, pack my bags and check out. I'll miss the bathroom TV.

In her email Newsletter #14 published yesterday Shanna Schmidt writes:

I spent the rest of my time walking the bourse floor. I immediately ran into author Neil Shafer and had a nice conversation. Len Augsburger joined us. Neil's 84 and still looking andfeeling great. It was so nice to see him. Len did a quick check of the Newman Portal on his cell phone and reported to Neil that his name produces over a thousand search results on NNP.

As I made the rounds of the bourse I stopped to talk with some E-Sylum advertisers and contributors, including Doug Winter, Gerry Fortin, and Dave Perkins.

I was impressed by the booth of Old World Coin of McHenry, IL and spoke to the owner, Dave Holladay. He's now an E-Sylum subscriber. This is the type of presentation I wish more dealerswould have. I've discussed this often with my friend Pat McBride of the Pennsylvania Association of Numismatists. It's nice to see people upping their game.

Next I went to the impressive exhibit area, which I enjoyed a great deal. Kudos to all CSNS exhibitors - this was a high quality showing. I took several photos.

A personal favorite of mine. This is the silver Carnegie hero medal we discussed earlier.

To read the complete article, see:
SILVER 1904 CARNEGIE HERO MEDAL SOLD (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n25a23.html)

Nice treatment of an interesting and important numismatic topic.

Great collection of medals!

This exhibit included a new book recently discussed in The E-Sylum.

The collecting instinct can lead many places. This exhibit was created by someone looking for something to collect that wouldn't break his budget. He decided to collect and categorize tagsfrom bread loaves. It turned out to be an interesting study and a great exhibit multicase exhibit for the miscellaneous category.

Back out on the bourse floor I ran into ANA President Jeff Garrett, and we sat down to talk for a bit. Next I stopped at the Pennsylvania Association of Numismatists booth where Tom Corey wastalking with Harry Waterson. Tom kindly took this photo.

Harry introduced me to James Earle and Laura Gardin Fraser collector Gary Hermann, also a new E-Sylum subscriber.

I'm not sure what happened, but I also took a photo (or thought I did) of elongated cent maven Ray Dillard. Sorry Ray - I don't have the photo. I can attest that he looked great; it wasnice to see him.

One of the last folks I spoke to was Bruce Perdue. We talked about some E-Sylum production issues and planned to hook up online Sunday night as usual.

I had a LOT of time to kill at the airport and tapped out this diary after dinner while waiting for my flight. I didn't get home unto the wee hours and had to drag myself back to work onFriday. Not a productive day, but it sure was a productive week numismatically. It was great to see everyone.