- The combination of digital libraries and applications from humanities is an important emerging field that still faces great challenges. In this paper we investigate the science of numismatics and analyse how to digitize current manual practice for the classification of ancient coins from the 4th century A.C. Our contributions are twofold. From the application's point of view we develop an improved classification algorithm with special emphasis on incompletely preserved coins. We present a new approach, called COINCLASS, to indexing (partial) image contents. Secondly, we show how to make maximum use of modern database technology by developing an extensible ODMG-compliant schema. In particular we point out the advantages gained by writting declarative set-oriented OQL queries. In essence our studies support the claim that current object-oriented database technology can cope with many complex applications from humanities.
