Update on London School of Economics Posters

The LSE Digital Library has just put online 88 Political and Tariff Reform posters. Thanks to Andy Jack (LSE) for the update to my blog post of 4 May.

(C) LSE Digital Library

What's the score: crowd sourcing and popular Victorian music at the Bodleian Library

What's the score is the Bodleian's first crowd-sourcing project and aims to engage the public in helping to make accessible a collection of Victorian popular piano music which was received by the Library under legal deposit but never catalogued.  No particular expertise is required to transcribe the information from digitised images of the scores.  Developed in partnership with Zooniverse, the site is now live and has its own blog.  While this project is concerned with complete scores, the bonus to ephemerists is that it surfaces thousands of Victorian music covers.  The digital images can be browsed and the data collected will eventually improve the searchability of the collection.  The project is on Twitter: @whatscore

 

(C) Bodleian Libraries

The Music Titles (covers only)  in the John Johnson Collection are catalogued. The records are available through the online catalogue.  Records and images are in ProQuest's The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera.

The Bodleian also has a fine collection of popular music and music hall songs which form a major part of the Harding Collection. These are in the Bodleian's online catalogue SOLO (no images). Abigail Williams' recent Radio 3 broadcast about Walter Harding is still available.

Ephemera at the Huntington Library

The Huntington Library of California has a web page devoted to Historical prints and ephemera which outlines the scope of the collections. Not limited to Southern California, the general collections include American politics, theatre and entertainment ephemera, 20th century American railroads, commerce and advertising. Specialised collections include the L.E. Behymer Archive of early Southern California cultural events, the Jay T. Last Citrus Labels, California Promotional Literature, the Diana Korzenik Collection of Art Education Ephemera, Trade Cards, and Maritime Ephemera and Posters collected by John H. Kemble.

The result set (483 results) for keyword Ephemera in the General Library catalogue includes books on ephemera, but also invaluable detailed collection-level descriptions for collections including ephemera.

(C) Huntington Digital Library

Many of these collections are available through the Huntington Digital Library. The 'Browse all' function allows the user to restrict search results to prints and ephemera and to narrow results by title, artist/author or subject.  Results can then be further sorted by relevance, title, subject, description, creator, date, and date created. Clicking on a thumbnail brings up a full image and extensive metadata.

Also of great interest to ephemerists is the Jay T. Last Collection of Lithographic and Social History.  Selections from this were exhibited in 2010 under the title The color explosion, represented by a webpage with video by curator David Mihaly.  There are many fascinating past exhibitions, including Revisiting the Regency.

Finding aids to the Huntington collections are also available through the Online Archive of California, notably (for ephemera) The American Sheet Music Collection, Jay T. Last collection of Califormia Citrus box labels and the Jay T. Last Collection U.S. Civil War prints, posters and ephemera.

Patent Medicines at Hagley Museum and Library

The Patent Medicine online exhibition (Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, DE) is designed to show a small portion of their holdings of Patent Medicine material. The exhibition is divided into Almanacs, Photographs, Advertising, Trade Catalogs, and Manuscripts, and has sections on the History of Patent Medicine and Advertising and Branding.

There are links from the exhibition to Hagley Digital Archives, which provides larger images, some metadata and the facility to purchase images. Users can also add tags and comments.  I will return to Hagley Digital Archives in a future post.

(Hagley Museum and Library)

Princeton University Special Collections

There is a really useful online guide to selected special collections at Princeton University Library.

Alphabetically arranged, it gives a description under each heading. The entry under Ephemera highlights printers' samples, playbills, ballads, a World Columbian Exposition scrapbook, and proofs of labels for the Dutch linen trade.  There are also separate entries for Bookplates, Broadsides, Dust-jackets (Hodder and Stoughton, c.1900-1940), Lantern slides, Phrenology, Poetry broadsides, and Prospectuses.

A text search for ephemera of the Princeton University Library website brings links to Latin American posters, Grabhorn ephemera, to the Edward Naumburg Tea ephemera collection listing, to the Cotsen Collection and much else.

The Cotsen Collection (which I was priviledged to visit last year for the ephemera conference: Enduring trifles) is principally a distinguished collection of children's books, but contains ephemera and the Webb Miniature Theatre archive, with the original printing plates and stones.

There is also a Princeton Graphic Arts Collection blog about Printed Ephemera (see screenshot), which focuses on individual items or groups of items from a wide range of ephemera, including games, rewards of merit, advertising, tobacco papers, Louis Prang, a tinsel print, dance cards, a magician, colouring of photograph and lantern slides, a sheet music cover, change packets and, most recently, sweet papers. There are 96 posts in all, so much to savour.

© 2012 The Trustees of Princeton University

Connected Histories

Connected Histories currently enables cross-searching of 15 major online resources, including the John Johnson Collection. They are: British History online, British Museum images, British Newspapers 1600-1900 (NB currently only the 17th and 18th century Burney collection: 19th century newspapers will be added soon).  Cause papers in the diocesan courts of the Archbishopric of York 1300-1858, Charles Booth archive (LSE), Clergy of the Church of England database 1540-1835, Convict transportation registers database, House of Commons parliamentary papers, John Foxe's The acts and monuments online, The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera (ProQuest), John Strype's Survey of London online, London Lives 1690-1800, Nineteenth century British pamphlets, Origins.net, The proceedings of the Old Bailey online 1674-1913.

Most of these resources (except Origins.net) are free to all or free to HE within the UK. They are all very powerful research tools in their own right.  Putting them into a cross-searchable resource enables fascinating links to be made. Ephemera take their rightful place in providing insights into our history.

You can choose which of the resources to cross-search. Clearly Crime is well represented. The John Johnson Collection Murders and Executions broadsides and other crime ephemera were digitised for the ProQuest project and a further project Mapping Crime enabled this material to be cross-searched with other collections, such as Harvard and the Old Bailey online. The addition of the Convict transportation registers database has enabled the fates of those sentenced to transportation to be traced.

Connected Histories has identified eight major research areas which will be well served by this resource and has written guides about each: Crime and justice, Family history, History of London, Imperial and colonial history, Local history, Parliamentary history, Poverty and poor relief, and  Religious history. There is a further guide on Searching for images which focuses on the John Johnson Collection and the British Museum.

You can save searches to your personal workspace, download images, etc. Connected histories is on Twitter: @connecthistory.

I searched for "frost fair" and got results from 5 resources. I could then choose to restrict these to document type, date range or availability (free or subscription).

Search for frost fair. (C) Connected histories

A search for Criminal (not a serious search of course!) returned 255,621 results across 14 resouces, including the (subscription only) Burney Collection (17th and 18th century newspapers).

Election and other ephemera at the London School of Economics

The election season is an appropriate time to focus on the holdings of the London School of Economics Library which is a major repository of political ephemera.

The Elections ephemera at the LSE Library covers general elections dating back to 1945, although there is some earlier material. The material is catalogued but not digitised.

Other online resources with digital images include Posters (Political and Tariff Reform Posters, c1892-1910; British Labour Delegation to Russia, 1920;  Russian Child Care posters, 1930; London County Council Election 1907) and Online exhibitions, e.g. CND, the story of a peace movement and Turning points: three key elections of the 20th century (1906, 1945, 1979).

Additionally, Fabian tracts and 19th century pamphlets are online, some through 19th century British Pamphlets online, others through the LSE itself (covering British history, Politics, Economic history, International history, Social policy, Poor laws and Welfare State, Origins of the National Health Service, Housing, Industry, Labour and the Trade Unions, Unemployment, and Transport (especially Railways).

Poster: (C) London School of Economics