Abstract
From Russell to Invercargill, there are at least 6,000 Greek and Roman coins in Aotearoa New Zealand's public and university collections. The exact number is unknown, as many have not been catalogued, and less than 10% have been published or are publicly available. Tūhura Otago Museum's collection, in Dunedin, comprises over a third of these, with approximately 2,500 coins held within its collections. In this chapter, we discuss three ways in which we are striving to increase accessibility to these valuable artefacts, bridging the 'tyranny of distance' by bringing ancient coins from the ancient Mediterranean into our classrooms and to a wider audience through online access to the collections. First, we are digitizing the coins and updating the previous cataloguing work undertaken by Harold Mattingly, Christopher Ehrhardt, and others. Second, many University of Otago students have now had the opportunity to share their knowledge and develop independent research projects and digital exhibitions which are shared with the wider community through internships. Finally, many students in the Classics Department at the University of Otago are given the opportunity to work with selection of coins as part of their coursework. We are currently working to install a digital exhibition space within Tūhura Otago Museum in order to bring a much larger set of the collection out to visitors. By increasing the accessibility of these coins and their stories, we seek to enhance their global visibility by making them discoverable online, while also forging connections between academics and students, museums and collection managers.