COINS desire to provide the general public with easy access to this rich portion of human culture shows several of the project’s values, namely Openness, Transparency, Collaboration, and Fun.
“More specifically, we wish to investigate how the arrangements of artifacts could reflect the material abundance that the collection exhibits while providing a playful mode of access that is inviting to a lay audience.”
– Gortana, von Tenspolde, Guhlmann, & Dörk (2018)
Openness
The digital humanities hold the belief that scholarly work should be freely available and that transparency in terms of back-end coding is an important part of this availability. COINS provides links to all the tools and scholarship used to create the interactive website, proving openness to be a true value of the project.
Transparency
DH believes in transparency, which allows us to present what we know, learn from it, and garner encouragement and feedback from other DH practitioners and scholarly audiences. When we engage in transparent processes for our projects, we are bolstered by the fact that we are contributing to the larger academic community, even before our projects are “finished.” COINS will always continue to develop as more is learned about the cultural significance of coins from the past.
Collaboration
DH knows that for success to be reached, there is the need for people with a range of skills to contribute to digital scholarship. COINS had a team of developers, designers, archivists, and numismatists (coin collectors) all working together to create the final product.
Fun
In the above quote, the project creators discuss how playfulness and fun were essential to the creation of COINS. The desire to allow people to learn about coins in an engaging and fun manner was crucial to the project.
