Updates to RRDP specimens

At long last, we have migrated the objects accessible in the SITNAM public database into a CollectiveAccess back-end. SITNAM was initially launched as a database that mirrors the functionality of the ANS collection, MANTIS, but for objects from public or private collections that don't have permanent, stables URIs. The test case was for the Roman Republican Die Project, for which there are tens of thousands of Republican coin images--largely from auction catalogs--pasted into cards and binders. The specimen data were stored in spreadsheets, but migrating these data into CollectiveAccess has opened the door to publishing improved bibliographic data in SITNAM that was not present in the first iteration of the database.

A coin from the Cisterna di Latina hoard

• Several hundred coins contained references to Coin Hoards of the Roman Republic, and so those URIs have been added into the hoard field for these records, and points for the hoard show up in maps of related specimens, e.g., this coin cited in Hersh and Walker's article on the Mesagne hoard. The hoards also propagate into the map-based search interface in SITNAM. Hoard is now a search facet in SITNAM.
• There is an improvement in publishing bibliographic references (which link to the ANS library catalog, if applicable) associated with public collections that have Nomisma URIs. Previously, only the collection name was present in the record, but not the associated reference work, for example, R. Wegeli and P. Hofer, Die Munzen der romischen Republik bis zum Jahre 27 (Bern, 1923) associated with coins in the collection of Bern, Switzerland.
• Auction records are better connected with the organization responsible with the sale, often linking to the VIAF URI for the entity. The seller is now a facet in the search interface, enabling a user to see all coins sold by the Classical Numismatic Group, for example. 
• Fixed typos or missing provenance records for about 1,000 coins in RRDP (about 2% of the collection). The provenance records are now stored in relational tables, which has made it possible to link a single specimen from Levantine Coins Online (a coin of Yehud) into the auction catalog record for a handful of Roman Republican coins from the RRDP dataset. This is the groundwork for greatly improving provenance research.
• External links to collections databases (which are not Nomisma contributors) or auction databases, like CoinArchives are now visible in SITNAM and should also be visible on the type pages for CRRO. 
• Auction dates are stored in the database, but not yet searchable in SITNAM, and so that could be one area to improve in the future: to search for all coins sold within a particular date range.

Several hundred coins of Yehud for the Levantine Coins Online project have subsequently been migrated into the SITNAM CollectiveAccess back-end, which greatly simplifies the long-term sustainability of disparate projects that need to publish coins from auctions or excavations that do not have stable URIs maintained by the holding individual or institution.