The Royal Canadian Numismatic Association (RCNA) has announced the sale of its library to the Nickle Galleries, a museum and art gallery housed at the University of Calgary.
Home to what its curators called “one of the most important numismatic collections in Canada,” the Nickle Galleries (formerly known as the Nickle Arts Museum) also displays contemporary art with a focus on Western Canada plus an extensive textile collection. The RCNA library will join the Nickle Galleries’ numismatic collection.
Once staff finishes cataloguing the library’s contents on the university system, its material will be available to everyone – both RCNA members and the general public – to borrow through an inter-library loan via their local library. Visitors to the Calgary museum can also view the material in person.
The RCNA will soon announce via its website and bimonthly journal details about when and how the material can be accessed.
The Nickle Galleries’ numismatic collection spans 23,000 artifacts from the beginning of coinage in the seventh century BCE through the present day.
In 2019, the museum hosted a fundraising banquet plus an exhibition, “Money and Calgary: The City’s History of Numismatics,” at that year’s RCNA Convention in Calgary.