Newman Portal Doors Remain Open

Although Washington University in St. Louis, which administers Newman Portal, has sent students home for the semester, Newman Portal activity continues apace. The campus remains open for staff and faculty, and, while we rely on students to operate scanning equipment, we do have a full-time staff member in St. Louis (Kelli West) to continue handling contributions of hardcopy materials. We also have good options for outsourcing scanning work if necessary. In the meantime, we encourage electronic submissions (documents and images) and can process these virtually. Among the electronic contributors in the last week were Q. David Bowers, Roger Burdette, Richard Lussier, Gerry Tebben, and others. There is no substitute for in-person gatherings of coin collectors, but there is no shortage of research to do on our own, and we hope Newman Portal will help facilitate this as a virtual library.Eric Newman once related his experience with the Spanish flu epidemic. Newman, 6 years old at the time, was with his father and sister in New York. The father, a doctor, felt the need to send the two children home to St. Louis. They were cached in a train car, which Dr. Samuel Newman scrubbed down with formaldehyde. The children were instructed not to leave their room until the train arrived in St. Louis. Eric and his sister Ivy, who was four years older, dutifully obeyed, and arrived in St. Louis no worse for wear, despite having inhaled a toxic substance for the better part of a day.Update [3/23/2020] Newman Portal has now gone 100% remote with all non-essential university functions transitioned to work-at-home. We will continue to build Newman Portal but are accepting electronic contributions only at this time.