oa Numista: Building a Collaborative Universal Numismatic Database

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One of the largest online numismatic catalogues is hosted by Numista, serving as a knowledge base for coins, banknotes, medals, tokens, and other related items. The catalogue, currently counting more than 320,000 types, is entirely free to access and addresses private collectors, museums, and researchers alike. The scope of the catalogue is universal, aiming to record all numismatic items from all periods and places. The aim of this paper is to introduce the particular methodology for building up this catalogue, which is based on a collaborative framework that relies on the public readership to continuously expand and update its content. The catalogue is accessible through the Numista website and through an application programming interface (API). The paper also presents the Numista relational database, which contains tables for numismatic objects and their attributes, such as mints, materials, and engravers, and the implementation of linked data methodologies.