Sunday, May 13, 2007

Five more BMC volumes

Google has given us five more volumes of BMC:

BMC Thrace (volume 3, Head and Gardner, 1871)

BMC Seleucid (volume 4, Gardner, 1878)

BMC Thessaly (volume 7, Gardner, 1883)

BMC Central Greece (volume 8, Head, 1884)

BMC Phyrgia (volume 25, Head, 1906)

At this point they aren't downloadable as .PDFs. Sometimes fresh titles can't be downloaded for a week or so, I'm hoping these will be available soon.

I've been working on a web page for BMC volumes. The goal is to reverse-link the plates, so that one can flip through plates and get Sear numbers and hyperlinks to Google. This is my own project, I don't think the BM even knows I do it. I emailed them once about rights to a book and got no answer, so I assumed they were too busy and took initiative myself.

Perhaps I'll find time to index Google's latest, although this month I'm very busy getting caught up with digitizing the ANS Magazine. (The current issues, with their support, for their website!)

It costs Google about $30 to scan a BMC volume, so the five volumes means they spent about $150 to greatly improve my hobby. I appreciate that. I often wonder why this job falls on Google. The institutions that paid for the writing and publishing just 100 years ago lack the interest (or will?) to scan their own books. These institutions don't even link to Google's editions from their web sites!

It isn't just institutions; for years I begged people to send me particular old coin books for scanning. I got a few emails but no books ever arrived. Somehow I'm misjudging what people will think is a good idea....

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