The Lamb Collection at Dundee Central Library

The Lamb Collection at Dundee Cental Library Local History Centre contains 450 boxes of ephemera, including photographs, maps, prints and books. Alexander Crawford Lamb (1843-1897), owner of a Dundee temperance hotel, set out to preserve evidence of Dundee's past -in  trade, commerce and the activities of its inhabitants.

Much of this material is now being surfaced, through the the Local History Centre website, which has an introduction to the collection, Lamb's biography and obituary, and sections on 19th century entertainment, cholera epidemics and crime. Each of these subjects is introduced and is represented by a short slide show.

© Dundee City Council 2009

Beyond this, The Silence of the Lamb project has led to the cataloguing and digitisation of 2,400 items, available through Resources for Learning in Scotland. 491 of these so far can be browsed as a collection as well as cross-searched with other collections. A feature of RLS is its Pathfinders, which provides themed learning resources.

Ephemera at the University of Glasgow

There is an overview of Ephemera in the University of Glasgow on the Special Collections pages and a link to the Scottish Theatre Archive online catalogue which contains much material from the University of Glasgow ephemera collections. There is also a very useful introductory page to the Scottish Theatre Archive, with Flickr slide show and a list of collections included in this resource.

The Social history page describes collections of Chapbooks and Broadsides as well as named special collections including ephemera, notably Euing (temperance), Murray (broadsides, street literature, chapbooks and advertisements) and Smith.

The Ephemera of John Smith is an online exhibition by Adam McNaughton. John Smith collected ephemera received in the course of his career (bookseller, town councillor and estate owner). Initially bound in albums, it is now arranged by theme: Transport, Political, Church, Trade, Entertainment, Crime, Education, Medical, and City affairs. The ephemera relate mainly to Glasgow in the first half of the 19th century. The online exhibition shows ephemera representative of each of the themes, with explanatory text describing the item and its relationship to the collection.

Glasgow Broadside Ballads: the Murray collection is an excellent introduction to and teaching resource for ballads from collections at Glasgow, and indeed to ballads in general. There is an index to the ballads in the collection with linked images, sound files of ballads being sung, introductions to ballads and the oral tradition, publishing and selling ballads, ballad consumers and singers.

Other online resources of interest to ephemerists are: Seaside entertainment (an online exhibition of postcards) and a Flickr  featuring Victorian Christmas cards.

Online Advent Calendars

I really like the online 'advent' calendars launched today, especially those of the Geffrye Museum, Oxford University Computing Services Open Advent calendar (24 open educational resources free to use, not just for Christmas) and the Regional Support Centre South East 'Appy Christmas calendar, which introduces educational apps, gadgets and tips.

©Geffrye Museum

 

My favourite so far is the University of Glasgow House of Fraser Archive Advent Calendar, which reveals a new Christmas image from the archive each day in a countdown to the launch of the online catalogue after Christmas Day. A fun way to introduce a new resource which, judging from the first image, will contain a lot of ephemera.

© UofG

Broadsides at the National Library of Scotland

The Word on the Street is devoted to Scottish broadsides, including public notices, ballads, speeches, and crime broadsides, between 1690 and 1910. Nearly 1,800 broadsides are available as jpegs and downloadable pdfs, complete with scholarly commentaries and transcriptions (with full-text searching and hit-highlighting). All can be browsed by title or subject or searched by keyword.
There are also excellent pages introducing the background, distribution and illustration of broadsides and highlights from Crime, Ballads, Emigration, Sport, Tragedy and disaster, Marvels, and Humour.
The screen shot is of Scotch Medley, in honour of St. Andrew's Day.

National Library of Scotland © 2004