American Antiquarian Society update: GIGI

Since my post in January 2012, the American Antiquarian Society has launched its Digital Image Archive, called GIGI with beautifully presented tif-format thumbnails. This is in addition to other stand-alone digital projects and online exhibitions. Of particular interest to ephemerists are the 1415 broadsides (Browse and select broadsides).  A keyword search for ephemera yields 3018 results at the time of writing (of 10,000 results from a keyword search in the General Catalogue). There are links from the catalogue into GIGI where appropriate, so the advice to scholars is to start there.

All very exciting for those of us who don't have Readex and want to browse the collections of the AAS.   There is advanced searching too within GIGI.



Search for broadside in GIGI (C) American Antiquarian Society

A list of collections represented includes the following categories of ephemera:
Album cards; Billheads; Broadsides; Christmas cards; Civil War envelopes; Currency; Election Ballots; Invitations; Membership Certificates; Menus; Postcards; Ream Wrappers; Sheet Music; Trade Cards; Valentines; and Watch papers from Graphic Arts, and Trade catalogs from Books. There are also hundreds of prints.

The AAS blog also has posts about ephemera (e.g. the recent post about Irish ballads for St. Patrick's Day) and a very active Twitter account: @AmAntiquarian

The Red Cross Museum and Archives: guest post by Jemma Lee

Congratulations to the Red Cross, celebrating its 150th anniversary today.

In September, I was privileged to visit the Red Cross Library with a small group from the Ephemera Society.  I invited Jemma Lee to write a guest post and am very grateful to her for doing so. 

The British Red Cross museum and archives exist to collect, preserve and make accessible to a wide audience the history of the British Red Cross and its place in the context of the international movement. 

The collection comprises both archive records and museum artefacts which have been generated and acquired by the organisation from its formation in 1870 as the British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War, to the present day and our continuing vital contribution in society. 

In addition to official minute books, annual reports, uniforms and medical equipment, the collection contains a fascinating array of ephemera which serves to strengthen the evidence that we hold of our humanitarian work and in many cases, to provide a personal element to our story.  Medals and badges awarded by the Society demonstrate the role of the volunteer, whilst labels from collecting tins and tickets for balls and galas provide colour and context to our fundraising activities.   

Poster, 1939. (C) British Red Cross Museum and Archives

The poster collection is particularly valuable in providing a visual record of our services such as first aid and care in the home, with examples by Tom Purvis and Charles Pears often proving to be very popular with visitors.  

Other ephemeral items include Christmas cards, stamps and packaging from products sent in food and relief parcels to Prisoners of War.   The latter subject is in fact greatly enhanced by this collection, with menus, programmes and propaganda leaflets, which are a valuable addition to the authorised documents of the Red Cross and hence offer a source of unique information for researchers.  

0566/32 (C) British Red Cross Museum and Archives

The website outlines the scope of the collections and there is an online catalogue through which the museum and archives can be separately searched through simple, advanced and expert search screens, often with digitised images, exemplified in this screen shot of a search for poster in the Museum collection.

(C) British Red Cross Museum and Archives

There are also online exhibitions of photographs and ephemera, including an overview of historical posters.

Ephemera is used within the context of the larger Museum and Archive collections to promote the work of the British Red Cross internally to staff and volunteers and externally to answer enquiries.  Tours of the collection can be arranged and research space can be booked by appointment either by emailing enquiry@redcross.org.uk  or by telephoning 020 7877 7058. 

 

Guest post by Gregory Toth: The Printed Ephemera Collection in the Caird Library, National Maritime Museum

Following on from my previous post about the ocean liner exhibition at the Musée de l'Imprimerie in Lyon, I am delighted to present a guest blog from Gregory Toth outlining the ephemera collections at the National Maritime Museum, a selection of which I saw earlier this month during a visit arranged by The Ephemera Society.

The Caird Library’s printed ephemera collection comprises chiefly of non-book printed items published for transient publicity, informational purposes or commemorating a service, event, person or an object. As this can include items such as brochures, calendars, itineraries, menus, programmes, tickets and timetables, the collection is extremely rich and varied in individual pieces. These items are usually (but not always) produced by the organization or company that is the subject of the item rather than by an individual who is external to the theme of the publication.

(C) National Maritime Museum

The collection covers a variety of subjects but is particularly strong in the area of merchant shipping companies, which comprise 75 – 80 per cent of the whole. Its strong focus on twentieth century merchant shipping, and with a particular emphasis on passenger cruises, the collection is possibly one of the largest in the world. Most of the items are published after 1850, with the vast majority of them in the twentieth century. It offers some areas of cross-over between the Library’s own holdings and those of other departments within the National Maritime Museum.  It overlaps in many respects with the Archive collections, which can include ephemeral items: for example a timetable included in the records of a shipping company remains with that company’s archive. 

Groups attracted to study it include family, social, art and maritime historians. The collection not only has strong potential for academic research, as both evidence of the shipping industry and the growth of cruising as leisure activities, but ephemera can also be studied as a visual form in its own right. For example, it can be used by researchers who are investigating the development of print advertising, or the design of on-board publications and programmes. Moreover, the highly visual nature of the collection makes it particularly suitable for exhibitions and displays, as it can assist with interpretation. Displays and blog posts have already benefited from the visual qualities, and the collection also has uses for the Museum’s Learning and Interpretation programmes as an accessible area of maritime experience. 

(C) National Maritime Museum

Readers are encouraged to explore the NMM’s website or search the Library’s onlinecatalogue.

Gregory Toth

Librarian, Acquisitions and Cataloguing

 

Exhibitions (2): Transatlantiques at the Musée de l'mprimerie de Lyon

In April, I was privileged to go to the opening of Transatlantiques: l'épopée graphique des paquebots de légende at the Musée de l'Imprimerie in Lyon. Dr Alan Marshall, director of the museum, has been a staunch advocate of ephemera for many years. His 2001 exhibition, Ephemera: les imprimés de tous les jours 1880-1939 was a trail-blazer and introduced a dazzling display of ephemera to the public mainly through four printers'archives: those of Imprimeries Audin, Gougenheim, Perreyon (all of Lyon), and A. Waton (St. Etienne). The excellent catalogue is still available at the museum.   Alan followed this (in terms of ephemera) with Couleurs, les prouesses de la chromolithographie, an exhibition curated by Prof.. Michael Twyman, world expert in lithography and ephemera.  Furthermore, the permanent displays of the museum include many examples of ephemera. These are, of course, a selection from very rich research collections.

Transatlantiques runs from Wednesday to Sunday until 1 September 2013 and is co-curated by Clémence Ducroix  and Alan Marshall. The exhibits are not from the museum's own collections but from l'Association French Lines, Le Havre, of which Mme Ducroix is the archivist.

Poster by Jan Auvigne. (C) Association French Lines

 An exhibition of ocean liner ephemera in Lyon?  The connection is not the sea, but printing. The stunning display of prints, forms, menus, brochures, leaflets, ships newspapers, posters, tickets, labels, wrappers and all sorts of promotional material shows what printing was necessitated by the running of transatlantic boats, ships and liners.  Through this angle, we begin to comprehend just how much was required to administer and promote these complicated companies.  Much was printed on shore, some on board, and there are large images of both printing operations.

The catalogue is co-authored by the curators and documents the history of the Compagnie Générale  Transatlantique, and the emergence of graphic art.for publicity.

Another exhibition of collections from l'Association French Lines has just opened in Evian. Légendes des mers. L'art de vivre à bord des paquebots runs from15 June to 22 September 2013.

The French Lines archive is currently being catalogued. On the website, there is a list of the main categories and also sample images.

Australasian Ephemera - Part 2: Australia. Guest post by Anthony Tedeschi

Very many thanks to Anthony Tedeschi for his second post about Australasian ephemera and to Richard Overell of Monash University for supplying images from their collections. Anthony's own blog: Antipodean Footnotes gives fascinating insights into rare books and special collections in New Zealand and Australia.

Australasian Ephemera Collections – Part 2: Australia

Following on from my guest post in October on New Zealand ephemera collections, the second of this two-part post highlights some of the ephemera collections held by Australian institutions. Like the New Zealand post it is hoped additions will be made by way of comments.

For details on the various subject categories collected, it is suggested interested readers consult each institution’s on-line catalogue (subject search ‘ephemera’). A Directory of Australian Ephemera Collections was published by the State Library of New South Wales in 1992. An Index, compiled by the State Library of Victoria, was published the following year.

(C) Monash University: special collections

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Studies

The AIATSIS began collecting ephemera in the 1970s. Starting out with a focus on print material, the collection has grown to include non-paper items, such as badges, t-shirts, and tea towels. The largest sequence in the collection is comprised of invitations to openings of Indigenous art exhibitions from across Australia.

A PDF summary of the collection and index to the ephemera categories is available (see link above).

Australian War Memorial

The AWM finding aids page includes links to multiple guides from aerial photographs and card, certificates and leaflets, to private records and film and sound. Though many of the guides pertain to ephemeral material, such as the Guide to the Cigarette & Trade Card Collection, under the specifically named ‘Ephemera (includes cards, certificates, leaflets, postcards and souvenirs)’ heading are listed: British Commonwealth Occupation Force Souvenirs Collection, Souvenirs 15, the Korean Collection, the Vietnam Collection, the Gulf War Collection, the East Timor Collection, the Iraq 2003 Collection, and the Afghanistan Collection.

Monash University Library 

(C) Monash University: special collections

Monash University special collections have been acquiring ephemera since the 1990s. Material in the collection dates from late seventeenth-century English pamphlets and broadsides to current menus, games, souvenirs, posters, flyers, cards, and junk mail. In 2011, the library hosted an exhibition called Ephemera, with a catalogue (PDF) and on-line version providing an overview of its rich holdings.

The Monash collection featured on the John Johnson Collection’s Ephemera Resources blog on 6 February 2012.

(C) Monash University: special collections

National Library of Australia

Australia’s national library has been collecting ephemera relevant to the nation since the 1960s. The Australian ephemera is indexed and divided into seven themes by subject: Australian performing arts programmes and ephemera (PROMPT), formed collections, general ephemera, geography and travel, programmes and invitations, scrapbooks, and trade catalogues. While the NLA collects widely, it aims to acquire as much Federal election campaign material and material relating to national events as possible. In 2007, the NLA received the oldest example of Australian printing – the 1796 ‘Jane Shore playbill’ – as a gift from the Canadian government.

The NLA maintains a General Ephemera Collection Thesaurus (PDF). Readers might also be interested in the Library’s database Trove, which includes a number of ephemera related resources and collections listed among its contents from across Australia, some of which, such as the Federation Ephemera at the State Library of New South Wales project, are freely available on-line.

Visitors can browse the ephemera collection and read the Library’s ephemera collection development policy. The Library’s ‘Behind the Scenes’ blog has also recently added two posts on ‘canvassing election ephemera in the Pacific’ (Part 1 and Part 2).

 

State Library of New South Wales

Between the Mitchell and State Reference libraries, the SLNSW holds a diverse collection of ephemera, which includes some of the earliest examples in Australia. Among the individual pieces highlighted on the Library’s website are: a 1612 Dutch translation of the de Quiros pamphlet, which contains the earliest printed reference to the word ‘Australia’, a broadside ca. 1789 describing a wild man or monstrous plant brought from Botany Bay, a playbill dated 8 March 1800, propaganda leaflets dropped by a Turkish aeroplane at Gallipoli during World War I, and an album of invitations, menus and other ephemeral printing related to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.

Among the subjects highlighted on-line are collections related to Qantas airline, which includes material from the 1920s to the present day, and on horse racing.

State Library of Queensland

The John Oxley Library of the State Library of Queensland notes calendars, elections, exhibitions and festivals, invitations, menus, royalty and royal visits, sport, and trade programmes among the categories of material which it collections. The strongest sequence in the collection is the Library’s theatre programmes, which date from 1866 to the present day.

The John Oxley Library blog uploaded two helpful posts (available on the same page) describing its theatre ephemera and how to search the ephemera collection in the Library catalogue.

State Library of South Australia

Material in the State Library of South Australia’s ephemera collection dates from 1836 onwards, and includes material similar in nature to many other institutions, from badges and business cards, to greeting cards and sheet music. The library, however, also holds a unique collection of wine labels. Collected since 1972, there are approximately 10,000 labels in the collection, reflecting the state’s connection to the Australian wine industry. A description of the collection can be found on the ephemera guide page (see link above), and two hundred and fifty labels have been digitised and are available through the Library’s Wine Literature of the World website.

State Library of Victoria

Centred on ‘Victoria and Victorians’, but including material from across the country as well, the State Library of Victoria holds one of the largest ephemera collections in Australia. Material dates from the 1850s onwards. In addition to the types of ephemeral material held by other institutions, the SLVA is busy building a collection of local zines to document Melbourne’s thriving art and music scenes.

Three of the library’s major ephemera collections – advertising, political ephemera, and theatre programmes – have individual descriptions. Some examples from the Library’s ephemera collection have been digitised, such as the fan-shaped programme for the play School for Scandal (Melbourne, 1869) and the 1935 Myer Mail Order Shoppers’ Guide for Autumn & Winter. There is also a research guide to the Library’s Political Ephemera Poster Collection. A number of the posters have also been digitised and are available on-line.

State Library of Western Australia

The SLWA ephemera collection numbers over 100,000 items. The library maintains a selection of highlights from its ephemera collection on topics such as ships and shipwrecks in Western Australia, royal visits, firms and businesses, the Festival of Perth, and a collection of tombstone inscriptions gathered from Western Australian cemeteries. There is also a page dedicated to finding Indigenous ephemera.

University of Queensland

While I could not find a general summary of its ephemera collection, the University of Queensland Fryer Library has highlighted some aspects of the collection, such as political ephemera and material marking Queensland statehood, as part of its Treasure of the Month on-line exhibition series.

New Zealand Update: Auckland City Library Ephemera Collection

Part of the Sir George Grey Special Collections, the ACL Ephemera Collection includes material from the 1840s onwards divided into three distinct collections: the Old Colonists’ Museum Collection (material on Auckland’s colonial period given to the library when the OCM closed in the 1950s), the Freida Dickens Programme Collection (music, dance and theatre programmes, 1911-1976), and the New Zealand Ephemera Collection, which is divided into two sequences based on type and subject matter respectively (material includes menus, tickets, advertising flyers, cards and calendars).

The library maintains a searchable ephemera index database.

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Wishing everyone Happy Holidays and a joyous New Year from the Antipodes!

[Guest post by Anthony Tedeschi, Rare Books Librarian, Dunedin City Library]