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EPHEMERA

Bodleian Library Collection The study of ephemera - defined as ‘the minor transient documents of everyday life’ - is an emerging discipline. It focuses on printed items, other than books. John Johnson amassed the collection of ephemera now at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and was one of the first twentieth-century scholars to recognize the importance of ephemera. Others have followed his example, rescuing and preserving minor documents in their various fields of interest.

Numerous collections of apparently insignificant oddments have emerged over the years - Artists’ Invitations; Bellmen’s Verses; Bill Headings ; Bookplates; Bookjackets; Booktrade; Calendars; Card games; Exhibition Catalogues; Greetings booklets; Playbills; Music Titles; Political Cartoons; Posters; Printed Fabrics; Provincial Playbills; Puzzle Pictures; Puzzles, Conundrums, Games; Soap; Trade Cards; Trade-in Prints and Scraps; Trades and Professions items; Tradesmen’s Lists - items that were intended in most cases for a brief life but which, with hindsight, illuminate their time.

CILIP Preservation and Conservation Panel. Report of the Working Party on Ephemera

Ephemera Society of America The website for the Ephemera Society of America contains news of events, exhibits, examples of collected ephemera.

Center for Ephemera Studies Center for Ephemera Studies located within the University of Reading, England

Ephemera Society of the UK

MANUSCRIPTS

The Manuscript Society

MOVIE POSTERS

Movie Posters at i Collect Movie Posters.com - Movie Poster Collector's Portal. Free collection software, movie poster price guide, movie poster forums, movie posters articles, movie poster image galleries, and much more. Jon Warren is the most knowledgeable person in the realm of movie poster collecting.

PULP FICTION

The cheap novels with paper covers were not intended for display, but rather to be read and tossed away.

Standford University’s Dime Novel and Story Paper Collection. The Standford University Collection documents the history of the genre, consisting of over 8,000 individual items, and includes long runs of the major dime novel series (Frank Leslie’s Boys of America, Happy Days, Beadle’s New York Dime Library, etc.) and equally strong holdings of story papers like the “New York Ledger” and “Saturday Night.”

OTHER EPHEMERA

Collection of the City of London Guildhall Library and Guildhall Art Gallery COLLAGE is an image database containing over 30,000 works from the Guildhall Library and Guildhall Art Gallery in London. In addition to paper ephemera, COLLAGE includes information and images of oil paintings, watercolors, and sculptures. Its strength is its 25,000 prints and drawings, as well as over 1,000 maps devoted primarily to London topography and London life from the fifteenth century to the present day.

With a specific inquiry, COLLAGE can be searched by keyword. The database can also be searched by artist, engraver, publisher, people, and places. Further, users can browse through the collection by selecting a theme: history, leisure, politics, trade and industry, etc.
COLLAGE’s exhibitions section features eight shows, including one of truly ephemeral items: discarded designs and rejected plans of London buildings.

SHEET MUSIC

The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music is part of the special collections department of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library of Johns Hopkins University. Its online database contains approximately 30,000 items and focuses on popular American music spanning the period 1780-1960. All pieces of the collection are indexed in the database and a query retrieves a catalog description, as well as an image of the cover and each page of music if the item was published before 1923 and is in the public domain. Users can both browse the collection and search for specifics. For example, an engraver/artist search for Charles Magnus results in seven hits; George Gershwin is represented by 43 titles; Sousa yields 170 documents, including some colorful sheet music covers; and “Star Spangled Banner” produces 82 results.