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

 

The National Fairground Archive

The National Fairground Archive at the University Library, University of Sheffield, under the leadership of Professor Vanessa Toulmin, has holdings which document fairs, circuses, menageries, magic, optical shows, etc. A subject list gives the scope of the collection, which includes 4,500 books, 250 journals titles, moving images, photographs, drawings, audio material, correspondence, diaries, cuttings, account books, maps, charts, plans, teaching materials, notebooks etc, as well as ephemera: postcards, trade and advertising material, programmes, calendars, almanacs, posters, proclamations, and 20,000 posters and handbills. There are word processed indexes (currently under revision) to each of these genres.

(C) NFA, University of Sheffield

The site includes articles, bibliographies and links to other websites and resources.

Researchers can visit in person, without an appointment Monday to Wednesday, with an appointment on Thursday.  Opening hours are posted online.

The National Fairground Archive has just launched NFA digital, with images added weekly. 19,720 images are currently online  and these can be browsed or searched by collection, period, subject, place and name. The Search tips, especially the explanations of themes and subject terms, are very helpful.

You can follow the National Fairground item on Twitter: @professorvaness


The subscription site: Victorian Popular Culture (Adam Matthew) which will be covered more thoroughly in my next post, includes material from the National Fairground Archive

(C) NFA, University of Sheffield

Science and Society Picture Library (SSPL)

The Science and Society Picture Library is the official print sales website of the Science Museum, National Railway Museum (see also post dated 30 January) and the Royal Photographic Society Collection. There are 40,000 images, divided into Vintage posters, Transport, Photography, Natural World, Places, Science & Technology, Society and Wars, and Other Collections. Each category is further subdivided. The Vintage Poster Transport section, for example, covers Railways, Aviation, Road Transport (shown in the screen shot), Water Transport and Other.

Ephemera can also be found through the search box. Advertisement, poster, trade, bill, programme, etc are all fruitful terms.

This is another excellent site where ephemera play their part in telling the overall story.  The images are accompanied by descriptions, often providing context.

Browsing if free but this is, of course, a commercial site, selling high-quality prints of an impressive range of museum images in various sizes, framed or unframed, on canvas, etc.  Users can log in, create My favourites, and a Basket.

(C) SSPL

Theatre collections in the Templeman Library, University of Kent

As well as cartoons (see post of June 12), the Templeman Library at the University of Kent has excellent collections of theatre playbills, programmes and posters, including (appropriately for ths year) a Charles Dickens Theatre Collection.

These can be searched through the library catalogue and also through a dedicated Theatre search facility. This allows users to filter by collection, subject (e.g. opera, melodrama), material type (theatre programme, playbilll etc) and theatre.  The filters appear in the order of the number of items associated with the term. Performers and titles of plays are indexed and can be found via the search box.

Where available, large thumbnail images appear alongside the metadata. A click on the thumbnail brings up a larger image, which itself can be zoomed with Zoomify.

(C) Templeman Library, Kent University

Victoria and Albert Museum

The V&A Search Collections pages enable cross-searching their wonderful material in imaginative and very visual ways. For ephemera, try poster, ephemera, greetings card, Christmas, private view, menu, bag, programme (Theatre and performance collection), ticket...

(c) V&A

You can narrow your searches in all sorts of ways, e.g Ticket brings up lots of metal bottle tickets, but you can limit by Prints, Drawings and Paintings Collections, then by Advertising, Entertainment, Transport etc.  It's great to have the wider context of the material though. All with useful Help screens (at the bottom) explaining how to search, view and order images.
A real voyage of discovery: one of my favourite sites.