The morning of Thursday, January 7, 2016 found me working on The E-Sylum for a couple hours instead of heading to work as usual. It would be a big day. My wife and I were heading to New York for that evening's ANS Gala and my meetings with ANS personnel for the Newman Numismatic Portal work I'm involved in.

She had a prescheduled appointment late in the morning, but we hit the road immediately afterward, stopping only to buy sandwiches to eat in the car. Our northward journey along I-95 was uneventful, and we arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel around 5pm, just enough time to check in, get dressed and make our way to the lobby where we soon met the evening's Honorees, John and Regina Adams.

The American Numismatic Society 2016 Annual Gala
For background on the event, here is the ANS Press Release.

To read the complete press release, see:
The American Numismatic Society 2016 Annual Gala (http://numismatics.org/NewsEvents/ANS2016AnnualGala)

I should mention that this was my wife's first-ever visit to New York, so starting off with a Gala at the Waldorf is a great introduction. And speaking of introductions, I spent much of the event introducing Dee to my numismatic friends new and old, including David Sundman, John Lupia, Dan and Connie Hamelberg, Anne Bentley, Bob Leonard, Ken Bressett, Dave Bowers, Ursula Kampmann, Ray Williams and many others.

Not to mention, of course, numismatic biblio-folks Joel Orosz, Len Augsburger and his wife Deb, George Kolbe and David and Maria Fanning,who were seated at an adjoining table. Our own table included Anne Bentley, Neil Musante and his wife CJ. I'll include some of my own photos, butthe event was covered well as can be seen here. We'll look forward to more photos in an upcoming ANS Magazine. I'm also hoping to getmore photos downloaded from my phone for a future issue.

The Gala was a fun affair. Joel Orosz did an outstanding job as emcee. At right is John W. Adams addressing the group. The awards and shortacceptance speeches took place first, with a short fundraising auction, a pun-ny summary of the years events, and a vocalist after dinner. The foodand staff were marvelous, but the highlight was just spending time visiting and talking to so many wonderful people. We hated for it to end, but ithad been a long day and we had an early morning ahead of us.

Breakfast at Sarabeth's
Dee and I met Joel in the lobby and together we took a cab to Sarabeth's, a breakfast place on Central Park South, where we met Len and Deb. It was a great way for Dee to get acquainted with everyone and make our plans for the day. Deb and Dee split off for the morning to shop and sightsee, visiting the Plaza Hotel, Central Park and the Empire State Building. Len Joel and I took a cab downtown to the ANS headquarters.

The Newman Numismatic Portal at the ANS

It was my first visit to the new ANS facility on Varick Street. Security was tight and visible, but not onerous. Soon we were inside andbeing greeted by ANS Librarian David Hill. Joel was there for research and split off to do his work while Len and I handled Newman Numismatic Portalbusiness. First, we went to see the scanning equipment setup. David and the scanner operator John Graffeo walked us through the process, whichinvolves creating a spreadsheet inventory, generating bar-coded labels, and using Internet Archive software to sync catalog information (author,title, pages etc.) with the online ANS library catalog. It's working pretty well, and books scanned at ANS are often already available on theInternet within hours.

ANS volunteer Arnie Tescher was quite helpful to all of us. Len and I prowled the stacks taking mental and photographic notes of items to place in the queue for future digitization. There are many factors to consider, including (primarily) usefulness to researchers, but also the ease of gathering material from the shelves and the amount of effort that would be required to write up the accompanying information. We're still in the low-hanging fruit stage, although eventually we'll go for a back-up-the-truck-and do-it-all approach while funding remains.

The NYINC Convention
Leaving the ANS we three amigos took a cab back uptown where we met the ladies for lunch. They'd had a wonderful time. Deb had to attend to some business but the rest of us walked back to the hotel afterwards. Dee went back to our room to relax and later I would catch up with Joel at the Library room where the Kolbe-Fanning sale lots were on view. But first, Len and I went to the NYINC Convention on the 18th floor.

After registering we spoke for a good while with ANS Publications Director Andrew Reinhard. Later I found a few minutes to meet and chat with E-Sylum contributor Pablo Hoffman and advertiser Bob Schwartz of Archives International, as well as Ursula Kampmann of CoinsWeekly.

That was about it for the numismatic portion of the trip. Joel joined Dee and I for a dinner at a nice Italian restaurant several blocks away. Dee and I then had a wonderful time walking around midtown, visiting Rockefeller Center and Times Square. We bought some more souvenirs for our kids. Saturday morning we had time to kill before checkout and went for a long walk in Central Park, toured midtown some more, then sat down exhausted for a nice lunch. The trip home was relaxing and uneventful. It was a productive and enjoyable trip all around. I'm only sorry we didn't have more time to spend. Dee and I are already planning to come back sometime with our kids.