1 00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:06,480 Okay. So I've called this two pieces of the jigsaw history through the John Dobson collection of printed ephemera. 2 00:00:06,990 --> 00:00:15,000 So I just wanted to examine the term ephemera or as it's properly pronounced, ephemera, though nobody in the ephemera world calls it that. 3 00:00:15,780 --> 00:00:22,260 It's a cumbersome term, rather academic for something so ordinary, something which is normally thrown away. 4 00:00:23,010 --> 00:00:26,090 So what is a form? Or rather, what are they? 5 00:00:26,100 --> 00:00:34,920 Because it is plural. Johnson used the term, the term, say, a summer of printing and printed ephemera. 6 00:00:35,100 --> 00:00:44,760 In his correspondence, well before the term was established by the publication in 1962 of John Lewis's book Printed Ephemera, which I have here. 7 00:00:46,470 --> 00:00:51,000 He was perhaps the first in Britain to define ephemera, albeit somewhat negatively. 8 00:00:51,390 --> 00:00:55,080 Something they have suffered from ever since I took it. 9 00:00:56,740 --> 00:01:01,870 He described a summer as everything which would ordinarily go into the wastepaper basket after use. 10 00:01:02,110 --> 00:01:04,330 Everything printed, which is not actually a book. 11 00:01:04,600 --> 00:01:10,930 And everything which a museum or library would not ordinarily accept as a gift and bear this last point in mind. 12 00:01:13,250 --> 00:01:18,830 You could say that ephemera is just an umbrella term for a variety of mainly single sheet material. 13 00:01:19,190 --> 00:01:22,190 A catch all for the ballads. 14 00:01:24,860 --> 00:01:28,300 Advertisement. Scraps. 15 00:01:29,540 --> 00:01:37,069 From the scraps raised souvenirs, trade cards and Christmas cards. 16 00:01:37,070 --> 00:01:48,570 Bowman's verses. And Rory timetables represented here and also for tickets, menus, book markers, postcards, posters, election cards and flyers. 17 00:01:48,840 --> 00:01:52,709 The list is extensive. The encyclopaedia of ephemera. 18 00:01:52,710 --> 00:02:01,440 Best testament to this. The Centre for Ephemera Studies at the University of Redding's brand new Thesaurus also has a very, 19 00:02:01,440 --> 00:02:10,950 very extensive and intricate definitions of all the terms that come under the umbrella of ephemera. 20 00:02:11,400 --> 00:02:18,000 But the point about ephemera is that they transcend these genres and become pieces in the jigsaw of social and printing history. 21 00:02:18,600 --> 00:02:26,940 Their charm and their importance is that they are chance survivals, which give us often unexpected insights into the daily lives of our predecessors. 22 00:02:27,970 --> 00:02:32,040 But it is dangerous to infer too much racing from a single piece of ephemera. 23 00:02:32,220 --> 00:02:36,270 Their effect is cumulative. The more restaurant menus we have, for example, 24 00:02:36,270 --> 00:02:41,010 the more conclusions we can draw about what relatively affluent people like to eat in a certain time frame. 25 00:02:41,850 --> 00:02:47,190 That's why an important part of my job is to refer people to other relevant collections and institutions or online. 26 00:02:47,670 --> 00:02:55,470 And of course, ephemera are only part of the jigsaw alongside the more established and respected forms of books, manuscripts, maps and music. 27 00:02:56,710 --> 00:03:04,030 It is remarkable, of course, that these fragile items have survived the subsequent journey to the bottom, and that's one of its special collections. 28 00:03:04,030 --> 00:03:12,070 And onto our screen is more amazing still. Not to mention the inclusion of ephemera in numerous sporting and exhibitions, including Marks of Genius. 29 00:03:13,990 --> 00:03:19,930 I would like to begin with a consideration of the founder, Donald Moderns Johnson, as a pioneer in the collection of ephemera. 30 00:03:20,930 --> 00:03:24,440 Although not born in Oxford, John Dodson spent most of his time here. 31 00:03:24,800 --> 00:03:31,200 He was educated at Morton Cottage School and then read grapes, followed by Arabic at Exeter College, becoming a paper ologist. 32 00:03:31,220 --> 00:03:33,560 After a brief spell in the Egyptian civil service. 33 00:03:34,220 --> 00:03:43,100 It was those excavations for papyri in Egypt which inspired him to ask himself what we were doing to preserve Egypt's paper heritage, he wrote. 34 00:03:43,520 --> 00:03:48,919 Often I used to look over those dark and crumbling sites and wonder what could be done to treat the background 35 00:03:48,920 --> 00:03:54,080 of our own English civilisation with the same care with which we scholars were treating the ancient. 36 00:03:55,220 --> 00:03:59,710 Certainly he has illustrious predecessors in the collection of ephemera. 37 00:03:59,720 --> 00:04:07,280 Among them John Selden, whose collection of ballots was continued by Samuel Pitts, who coined the term Bulgaria for these single sheets. 38 00:04:07,790 --> 00:04:14,240 However, early collectors typically specialise in one or two specific areas of what are now considered ephemera. 39 00:04:14,450 --> 00:04:18,710 As many, many collectors still do today. Johnson's vision was much broader. 40 00:04:20,190 --> 00:04:23,309 Johnson himself paid tribute to six great men of his own time. 41 00:04:23,310 --> 00:04:28,710 Well, just before who saw the truth that the waste, the ephemera of today are the true data of tomorrow. 42 00:04:28,740 --> 00:04:34,740 Call them collectors or whatever you like. They were Robert Proctor, and it cannot be lost on the staff of the British Museum, 43 00:04:34,740 --> 00:04:39,420 but whose ephemera came to the Bodleian, the Reverend W.T. McCrae, who worked at the Guardian, 44 00:04:39,660 --> 00:04:46,770 AWP, Nicholson Wallace, librarian George Potter, Jack Kirby, founder of the Chiswick Press, 45 00:04:46,770 --> 00:04:49,950 and Harry Keech, who founded the Dryads handicraft firm in Leicester. 46 00:04:50,700 --> 00:04:56,190 However, Johnson recognised this in the breadth and depth of his own collection, he has created something new. 47 00:04:57,570 --> 00:05:04,950 I think I can say that the width of these collections as they stand, has no other counterpart in the world collected on these on this wide area. 48 00:05:05,100 --> 00:05:11,720 They render us open to the banter of the world. That he intended to be all embracing as underlined by his challenge. 49 00:05:12,020 --> 00:05:17,870 As you can see, I challenge any to suggest any subject in which we can record no evidence at all. 50 00:05:19,590 --> 00:05:25,080 Had he not been unfit for military service when the First World War broke out, Johnson might never have formed the collection. 51 00:05:25,350 --> 00:05:31,830 Returning to Oxford, he secured wartime employment at the Oxford University Press as assistant secretary of the delegates of the press. 52 00:05:32,280 --> 00:05:37,590 After the war, he remains the becoming princess of the university between 1925 and 46. 53 00:05:38,130 --> 00:05:45,600 The press was an ideal environment to form his Museum of Common Printed Things or the sanctuary of printing, as it was often called. 54 00:05:46,710 --> 00:05:51,120 Officially, it was named the constant means memorial collection of ephemeral printing after 55 00:05:51,120 --> 00:05:54,839 the benefactors who as well as passing on to him ephemera collected by her great 56 00:05:54,840 --> 00:06:00,240 grandfather bishop passive to himself an ephemeris to use an anachronistic term 57 00:06:00,630 --> 00:06:04,670 enabled him to furnish the full form of Bibles printers office that the press, 58 00:06:04,680 --> 00:06:11,490 which you can see here to house his growing collection. It's as important and humbling to remember that this was Johnson's hobby. 59 00:06:14,410 --> 00:06:18,010 Dodson collective retrospectively, except in certain areas. 60 00:06:18,310 --> 00:06:25,510 For example, developing technologies such as the telephone, the Marconi Gram and private presses where he knew the printers. 61 00:06:25,960 --> 00:06:29,830 He felt strongly that the farmers should survive by chance rather than design. 62 00:06:30,160 --> 00:06:37,780 1939 was his cut-off date. We have virtually no ephemera from the Second World War, the 1940s, fifties, or most of the sixties. 63 00:06:41,100 --> 00:06:43,740 Johnson's curation of his own collection was innovative. 64 00:06:44,310 --> 00:06:51,990 He can lead to both the organisation of his collection from library technique fall coats with the state of the art at the time and clearly impossible. 65 00:06:52,230 --> 00:06:56,520 After all, you'd need at least one, if not three or four cards for each item. 66 00:06:57,510 --> 00:07:02,250 In terms of physical storage, Johnson established different colours for each of his main headings. 67 00:07:02,550 --> 00:07:08,910 His perfectly ordinary file boxes were found by apprentices at the press, and they also taught letter labels for them. 68 00:07:09,360 --> 00:07:13,590 You can see them here courtesy of later colour images of the collection in the new library. 69 00:07:14,410 --> 00:07:18,690 After the structured grew 680 subject headings which you will find online. 70 00:07:20,610 --> 00:07:24,599 In protecting his collection from the from the lights and from greasy fingers. 71 00:07:24,600 --> 00:07:28,860 Dotson was again innovative at a time when many collectors, including Pelosi, 72 00:07:28,860 --> 00:07:34,710 wonder who is establishing a parallel collection at the New York Historical Society, were using scrapbooks. 73 00:07:34,860 --> 00:07:38,640 Jobson used good quality paper offcuts from the press to mount his collection. 74 00:07:39,240 --> 00:07:41,040 Only his method of hindering have caused. 75 00:07:41,040 --> 00:07:47,340 This problem is just too brittle to enable the verso or last page of any document to be folded flat for reading. 76 00:07:47,580 --> 00:07:52,960 Most important recently for digitisation. So what are these main things? 77 00:07:54,700 --> 00:07:56,920 I'll read them because this is being political. 78 00:07:56,940 --> 00:08:08,710 So advertisements, arts and architecture, artists, authors, book trades and publishing history, educational entertainment form or genre pastimes. 79 00:08:10,720 --> 00:08:14,350 Political. Religious, social and economic history. Printing processes. 80 00:08:14,350 --> 00:08:20,110 Prints. Private presses. Sport. Topographical transport and travel and holidays. 81 00:08:23,270 --> 00:08:30,160 The 680 subject headings you can see arrange both alphabetically and onto these main themes online. 82 00:08:30,950 --> 00:08:34,100 Jonson's Maxim was let the material sort itself. 83 00:08:34,550 --> 00:08:36,379 There is no one sorting principle. 84 00:08:36,380 --> 00:08:44,150 You can apply certain programs or arrange by venue advertisements, by product, education by place, transport by mode of transport and so on. 85 00:08:45,100 --> 00:08:47,649 The type of index Dotson and his assistant, 86 00:08:47,650 --> 00:08:53,410 Lillian Russell establish merely indicates that the subjects are represented in each section and how they were arranged. 87 00:08:53,680 --> 00:08:57,250 We produce the same sort of indexes now, albeit in PDF form. 88 00:08:58,630 --> 00:09:00,130 So where did the material come from? 89 00:09:00,610 --> 00:09:07,510 Johnson's position at the press meant that he had many contacts in the book signing world who sent him bundles of ephemera and a network of consent. 90 00:09:08,320 --> 00:09:16,780 He avoided advertising too much what he was doing, fearful that the market would catch up with ephemera, then deemed of little monetary value. 91 00:09:17,110 --> 00:09:23,230 He was right. It has to. Articles about the collection were published in the typographical journal Signature. 92 00:09:25,300 --> 00:09:31,660 However, in 1926, the Council of the University rejected, after ten years in decision, 93 00:09:31,660 --> 00:09:37,390 the parliament collection of postage stamps and postal history stocks and rescued what he could of this with his own money. 94 00:09:38,020 --> 00:09:44,410 Even more significantly, when solicitor up collecting ephemera, the opium was actually actively disposing of them. 95 00:09:46,450 --> 00:09:51,700 The elimination of a new clause of the statute enables the curators to eliminate from 96 00:09:51,700 --> 00:09:55,779 the library material of no literary or artistic value or of an ephemeral nature, 97 00:09:55,780 --> 00:10:00,550 which it is not in the interests of the library to include in the general catalogue or preserve on the shelves. 98 00:10:01,360 --> 00:10:05,409 These eliminated the ephemeral but passed to John Dodson by the first keeper of printed 99 00:10:05,410 --> 00:10:10,060 books from Gibson and came back with the acquisition of the collection in 1968. 100 00:10:11,530 --> 00:10:16,600 There was no private property in the collection. Early in its formation, it became a university collection. 101 00:10:17,970 --> 00:10:23,370 When Johnson died unexpectedly in 1956, the press retained the collection for a further 12 years, 102 00:10:23,370 --> 00:10:28,080 recalling Johnson's assistant, Lillian Russell, to look after it. She companies it to the battalion. 103 00:10:28,470 --> 00:10:32,940 Amazingly, it would only take them 30 years for the body and to do a complete fuss. 104 00:10:34,350 --> 00:10:43,320 In 1971, the body mounted an exhibition of five for 259 items or groups of items to a slightly bemused public. 105 00:10:43,870 --> 00:10:51,180 So you can see from the reviews here. Ironically, the library was then in the vanguard of what is now known as Ephemeral Studies. 106 00:10:51,690 --> 00:10:57,480 The catalogue of the exhibition is still the standard work on the formal formation of the collection and its online. 107 00:10:59,760 --> 00:11:01,829 So using the collection, we do, of course, 108 00:11:01,830 --> 00:11:07,260 have real readers here in the Western Library looking at real documents for which they do need that e-tickets, 109 00:11:07,260 --> 00:11:09,150 but they don't necessarily need to be scholars. 110 00:11:10,110 --> 00:11:17,250 People use the collection for a variety of reasons, but the focus of this talk is inevitably on the resources that I can show you here. 111 00:11:18,790 --> 00:11:24,150 It's important to realise only a small fraction of the material is catalogued and digitised. 112 00:11:24,160 --> 00:11:27,280 About 100,000 items of about a million and a half. 113 00:11:28,310 --> 00:11:34,250 Since those original indexes of John Dodson and the curation of the collection has certainly involved an interesting, 114 00:11:34,670 --> 00:11:39,260 unforeseen and unforeseeable wave in terms of physical storage. 115 00:11:39,260 --> 00:11:46,010 The collection is not just as Johnson left it. Books have been waiting for boxes and added to the separate sequence of Johnson books. 116 00:11:46,460 --> 00:11:53,510 Sections have been rethought as an index. Housing has been improved with the addition of melanchthon acid free folders so that we can 117 00:11:53,510 --> 00:11:57,920 create an acid free environment without having to dispense of Johnson's original pound boxes. 118 00:11:58,430 --> 00:12:04,700 This is inevitably meant that the collection has expanded. Items have been taken off their mounts when digitised. 119 00:12:04,730 --> 00:12:13,310 The reason I explained earlier and remounted with Japanese paper pre 1960 material has been added to Johnson's original boxes in small quantities. 120 00:12:13,610 --> 00:12:19,160 And a decision was taken to collect contemporary ephemera when the collection came to the library in 1968. 121 00:12:19,520 --> 00:12:27,889 We simply cannot afford not to do so. We collect intensively for major events such as the Queen's Jubilee, the Olympics elections and so on, 122 00:12:27,890 --> 00:12:32,630 but also generally and I put on the table some ephemera that I picked up yesterday morning. 123 00:12:33,650 --> 00:12:39,980 This is not a time, the time to discuss the pros and cons of such contemporary collecting, but it is an interesting problem. 124 00:12:40,990 --> 00:12:46,990 By far, the most far reaching change has been the advent of computers which have revolutionised what we can do with ephemera. 125 00:12:47,320 --> 00:12:52,270 We have been fortunate to undertake many projects with with staff in quite a lot of cases. 126 00:12:52,480 --> 00:12:55,480 And in the case of the ProQuest project, there were ten of us. 127 00:12:56,530 --> 00:13:02,080 I'm very fortunate to have been in post before and after the computer age or during, I should say. 128 00:13:03,310 --> 00:13:07,240 Computers enable us to make connections through cataloguing, 129 00:13:07,930 --> 00:13:13,540 make the collection known outside the library, create virtual collections through digitisation. 130 00:13:13,840 --> 00:13:17,020 The arrangement in Johnson's original boxes, however logical, 131 00:13:17,020 --> 00:13:24,729 is always only one of the ways in which ephemera could be arranged and through OCR optical character recognition, 132 00:13:24,730 --> 00:13:29,710 search the text of the items themselves, which adds a whole new layer of access. 133 00:13:30,850 --> 00:13:39,130 The firm are ideal candidate for digitisation. Of course, often the whole document is a single sheet, so you can see the whole thing on the screen. 134 00:13:39,700 --> 00:13:47,980 Many of them are designed to attract. Many of them were innovative with new printing processes such as rainbow printing or compound plate printing. 135 00:13:49,390 --> 00:13:54,580 The key to all this is cataloguing or metadata curation beyond the scope of the index. 136 00:13:54,580 --> 00:13:59,680 As we looked at earlier, cataloguing is not normally designed to make people sit up and look interested. 137 00:14:00,130 --> 00:14:07,150 And indeed, I will spare you much detail. Suffice it to say this ephemera have traditionally been the best in the wall of catalogues. 138 00:14:07,600 --> 00:14:11,230 That's partly why they have languished so long in libraries. They are difficult. 139 00:14:11,320 --> 00:14:15,820 They just don't behave decently like books. There is rarely a title worthy of the name. 140 00:14:15,850 --> 00:14:18,760 Rarely an author, rarely dates. And rarely an imprint. 141 00:14:19,060 --> 00:14:27,250 Cuts in cataloguing them can take an awfully long time too, for a scrap of paper or records or long, often even longer than this. 142 00:14:28,260 --> 00:14:33,140 Well, ways of cataloguing books, maps and music manuscripts electronically were quickly established. 143 00:14:33,150 --> 00:14:34,920 There is still no standard for ephemera. 144 00:14:35,250 --> 00:14:42,000 Given that I am one of the very few former librarians in the world and that ephemera are held not only in libraries but at museums, 145 00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:47,940 archives and local history collections. And each type of institution has evolved a different method of cataloguing. 146 00:14:47,970 --> 00:14:56,400 This is scarcely surprising. We have evolved our own system, readily exportable into other formats for projects, for joint projects. 147 00:14:56,670 --> 00:15:01,200 And I am very grateful to my colleagues, David Honeywell, for setting this up, maintaining a migrating it. 148 00:15:01,350 --> 00:15:06,060 And Thaddeus Lipinski for creating the catalogue webpage complete with images. 149 00:15:07,370 --> 00:15:12,560 The text format, which is very detailed and aims to create as many cross-reference as possible, is online. 150 00:15:13,250 --> 00:15:17,240 We ain't catalogued as much detail as we possibly can to make as many collections of 151 00:15:17,540 --> 00:15:22,340 connections as we can between items and we digitise when project funding allows. 152 00:15:25,540 --> 00:15:31,690 Scarily, however, a lot of scholars seem to believe that we've catalogued and digitised everything overnight. 153 00:15:31,810 --> 00:15:38,770 So I have to remind everyone that we have only catalogued 100,000 of a million and a half. 154 00:15:39,990 --> 00:15:44,790 With the exception of two projects, toys and ballots, all our catalogue records are on our own site. 155 00:15:45,120 --> 00:15:49,640 Searching and browsing is fairly basic, with the records in both display and bibliographic forms. 156 00:15:51,460 --> 00:15:56,230 There is much to explore through our website and the leaflet I have put at the front will 157 00:15:56,230 --> 00:15:59,830 tell you how to find the various resources which I am really going to with through. 158 00:16:01,300 --> 00:16:06,760 You can find motor cars and other forms of transport through the Toyota project, the building's first digital project. 159 00:16:07,330 --> 00:16:10,030 Political Cartoons and creative professions. Prince. 160 00:16:10,780 --> 00:16:18,100 Trees, Courts and Our Nations of Shopkeepers exhibition, which was the first one, an exhibition to go online. 161 00:16:19,860 --> 00:16:23,189 Boardgames. Writing planks or schoolboys. 162 00:16:23,190 --> 00:16:26,070 Pieces and 18th century entertainment. 163 00:16:28,960 --> 00:16:36,730 But our busiest project was in partnership with ProQuest called, somewhat confusingly, the John Dobson Collection, an archive of printed ephemera. 164 00:16:36,820 --> 00:16:42,010 It focuses on just five areas of the collection advertising 19th century entertainment, 165 00:16:42,160 --> 00:16:46,900 crime, murder, film executions, popular prints and book traits. 166 00:16:48,490 --> 00:16:54,100 Everything else we have catalogued or digitise falls outside its scope and needs to be accessed through our own site. 167 00:16:54,670 --> 00:17:01,000 You can access this project as well as set free of charge in the UK through higher education, further education, schools and public libraries. 168 00:17:01,240 --> 00:17:04,930 But you can't just sit at home and type the URL and hope to gain access. 169 00:17:05,530 --> 00:17:11,470 It uses exactly the same metadata as on our own website, which much more functionality than our own online catalogue. 170 00:17:11,920 --> 00:17:15,160 This is a quick tool. You can browse and search. 171 00:17:17,380 --> 00:17:24,910 You can view the context of the item so you can actually see how they are arranged in the boxes as if you were going through the boxes themselves. 172 00:17:26,530 --> 00:17:30,280 You can search within the text of documents with hitch highlighting. 173 00:17:32,680 --> 00:17:40,540 You can filter the results. So here's a search for further benefits of but filtered by method of production on silk. 174 00:17:42,200 --> 00:17:47,780 Or hear a name search for Alan Terry, but filtered by advertisement. 175 00:17:51,620 --> 00:17:55,219 There are tailored separate search screens for each of the five areas. 176 00:17:55,220 --> 00:18:00,590 So you can find out who we have in terms of the material in the collection. 177 00:18:00,830 --> 00:18:07,420 Who was transported for sheep stealing, for example? The iconographic content of the material is indexed. 178 00:18:07,420 --> 00:18:15,340 Do you think so? The three. And there's a lightbox facility which enables you to save the images you particularly like. 179 00:18:16,120 --> 00:18:20,290 These can be emailed to people. So I do most of my inquiries this way. 180 00:18:20,920 --> 00:18:25,930 And if you click on a thumbnail, as long as you're inside the project, it will take you back to the relevant item. 181 00:18:27,310 --> 00:18:33,650 All the nice features of Zoom. Onscreen measurement in both dimensions. 182 00:18:35,450 --> 00:18:44,950 And rotation. So what is the importance to scholars of this material which escaped the wastepaper basket? 183 00:18:45,580 --> 00:18:51,850 It is invidious to pick on just a few items, especially in isolation, as the strength of memory for research, 184 00:18:51,850 --> 00:18:56,500 as the cumulative story they tell in the cross-references as much as in the minutiae. 185 00:18:57,310 --> 00:19:01,210 However, I have tried to pick examples which cast interesting sidelights on history. 186 00:19:04,080 --> 00:19:07,740 Here we have posters or playbill. 187 00:19:07,800 --> 00:19:15,720 In the case of the left, the two of really often indistinguishable, showing a variety of entertainments you would expect in a single evening. 188 00:19:16,170 --> 00:19:20,160 These posters for 1842 and 1884, respectively, 189 00:19:20,460 --> 00:19:27,750 show the effectiveness of display type printed in black and red or blue and orange to orientate the reader towards the main themes. 190 00:19:28,110 --> 00:19:33,870 But the details of the spectacles of the Voxel Gardens poster and smaller type of course fascinating to us. 191 00:19:34,590 --> 00:19:38,070 The performers prices, refreshments and the availability of boats. 192 00:19:38,610 --> 00:19:40,139 Right at the bottom we learnt that. 193 00:19:40,140 --> 00:19:46,350 We learned that permission has been given to the proprietors of the state carriage which belonged to the Emperor Napoleon and 194 00:19:46,350 --> 00:19:52,470 which was taken on the field of Waterloo to be exhibited within a handsome tent erected on the stage of the Ballet Theatre. 195 00:19:54,210 --> 00:19:58,920 On the right from the poster from the Canterbury Theatre of Writers in 1884. 196 00:19:59,190 --> 00:20:04,830 That's again a rate, an array of entertainments which include in the Trenches, 197 00:20:04,860 --> 00:20:09,540 which is an episode from the Crimean War that took place 30 years earlier. 198 00:20:11,110 --> 00:20:22,440 So it shows that although ephemera all of their time, they are also interesting in showing us how long events state of the public consciousness. 199 00:20:23,970 --> 00:20:30,900 We have a good collection of mothers electrocutions broadsides with some of the most grisly images in the collection. 200 00:20:31,440 --> 00:20:35,820 These broadsides carried illustrations of the crime the criminal prison cells. 201 00:20:35,850 --> 00:20:40,560 Court scenes or hangings. All those are represented in the slides. 202 00:20:41,400 --> 00:20:50,850 These broadsides are formulaic, typically including verses and last dying words, almost invariably expressing penitential and pious sentiments. 203 00:20:51,750 --> 00:20:56,340 On the left, the murder of Jane Jones by Daniel Goodes in 1842. 204 00:20:56,940 --> 00:21:02,430 In the centre chase of Connor, executed in 1845 for the murder of Mary Brothers. 205 00:21:02,820 --> 00:21:09,990 And on the right, a multiple hanging in 1916, which exemplifies the poor quality of these quickly produced execution broadsides 206 00:21:10,440 --> 00:21:13,620 the printer created didn't have a block available for three hangings, 207 00:21:13,710 --> 00:21:17,490 so he just added two of the criminals to the edge of the sheet. 208 00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:21,210 These were the gutter press of the time, and they were sold at the scene. 209 00:21:22,990 --> 00:21:28,490 I am particularly fascinated by trade cards and especially trade since lists such as this one, 210 00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:33,020 which give us a wealth of information about the nature and provenance of merchandise. 211 00:21:33,590 --> 00:21:42,290 This beautifully engraved example for John Light, dating from 1795, shows us the breadth of produce sold by an oilman. 212 00:21:42,680 --> 00:21:45,860 Many of these goods remain luxurious and exotic today. 213 00:21:46,250 --> 00:21:55,970 Pineapples were, of course, much prized at that time. Barbary were an acid red berry, but Argos were a relish made of the row of the mullet old Tunny. 214 00:21:56,900 --> 00:22:00,770 The last reference to these in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1852. 215 00:22:01,740 --> 00:22:06,570 There is much more to be done with ephemera in terms of the etymology or even the first use of words. 216 00:22:06,900 --> 00:22:11,459 The problem is that ephemeral, often not dated because they are of their time. 217 00:22:11,460 --> 00:22:15,870 There was no need to date them. The same is frustratingly true of ephemera today. 218 00:22:16,170 --> 00:22:21,420 I haven't looked for. So I imagine that those items that I picked up yesterday rarely half the year. 219 00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:28,740 In this particular case, the Verso has been used as a bell and so we do have a date for May 1795. 220 00:22:31,270 --> 00:22:38,150 And Lisa, in case you couldn't read it on screen. Transcription from our catalogue of the items that the fold in that. 221 00:22:39,090 --> 00:22:45,450 Bill. And of course, with the manuscript content on the Verso, you often get additional items. 222 00:22:48,620 --> 00:22:54,660 Also dated by Bill on the Verso is this beautiful engraved traits card for spills rebukes straight. 223 00:22:54,890 --> 00:23:00,950 The bill made out in 1759 to Lady Betty or Elizabeth Harcourt, daughter of Simon Harcourt. 224 00:23:00,950 --> 00:23:05,800 First O Harcourt to Stanton Harcourt. So tying in neatly with all manuscript collections. 225 00:23:07,800 --> 00:23:12,480 Benjamin Morgan's letter press trade card gets details about the trees and acids 226 00:23:12,480 --> 00:23:18,480 milk as well as chewing a typical shop sign of the time and dates from about 1793. 227 00:23:19,200 --> 00:23:21,500 From the train card, it was a manhattan. 228 00:23:21,510 --> 00:23:27,840 We have evidence not only of a woman in trade with her husband rather than, as was quite common, a widow carrying on a business, 229 00:23:28,410 --> 00:23:33,570 but also of a son who is intentionally damaging the business by claiming to be in partnership with his father. 230 00:23:34,140 --> 00:23:41,400 We also have evidence of the combination of chimney sweeping with empty necessaries and a change of address. 231 00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:45,750 Although frustratingly again, without a date, it's around 1850. 232 00:23:46,680 --> 00:23:55,550 The last trade cards for Castle Marlborough is fascinating, and the riddle relates to sending cheese by the equivalent of mail order. 233 00:23:55,560 --> 00:23:59,610 But the claim that these cheeses will bear a voyage to the West or East Indies, 234 00:24:00,240 --> 00:24:05,460 the BE or a stump reveals another source of Johnson's ephemera, the British Records Association. 235 00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:12,810 Johnson formed his collection with a dual purpose to document printing history and social history. 236 00:24:13,200 --> 00:24:18,330 Ephemera are very important in terms of printing history. As often experimental techniques are used to create them. 237 00:24:18,900 --> 00:24:23,370 The three bill here of 1879 is printed by Rainbow Printing. 238 00:24:26,490 --> 00:24:35,730 The Drury Lane Silk label of the 15th May 1800 was reputedly dropped by George the third, when a second attempt was made on his life that very day. 239 00:24:37,500 --> 00:24:43,680 The Hazard Lottery bill is printed by the anti forgery Congreve compound plate printing process process 240 00:24:44,010 --> 00:24:48,780 where two finely engraved plates linked separately and brought together to be printed in one impression. 241 00:24:49,110 --> 00:24:53,669 This enables the fine white lines to run between the two colours almost impossible to 242 00:24:53,670 --> 00:24:57,900 achieve by registering the plates in the normal way for printing in two impressions. 243 00:24:58,530 --> 00:25:06,350 This embossed item was printed by Whiting and Branston and dates from the last year of Lotteries 1826 before their recent revival, of course. 244 00:25:07,930 --> 00:25:15,969 The collection is full of wonderful examples of chrome lithography. The label for the Royal Jubilee Stationery Cabinets 1887 is just one printed by 245 00:25:15,970 --> 00:25:19,990 Charles Goodall and son who were famed for playing cards on Christmas cards. 246 00:25:21,090 --> 00:25:26,480 And finally, a wood engraving with ornamental type Laura is surprisingly difficult to date. 247 00:25:26,490 --> 00:25:32,010 Anything really from 1863 to 1890, though I would favour an earlier date rather than the later one. 248 00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:35,800 Design history pervades the collection. 249 00:25:35,810 --> 00:25:48,800 I've chosen just two examples from the 1891 French design version graphic in 1892 and the author Dudley Hardy's famous Gaiety Girl of 1894. 250 00:25:51,380 --> 00:25:56,660 This slide shows the names of colours which were used in the 1890. 251 00:25:56,760 --> 00:26:09,620 I think that's quite an interesting sidelight on art colours and printing colours, and in this case, colours of dyes and some distemper. 252 00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:18,730 The John Johnson collection is by no means a local history collection, but it is very strong in provincial ephemera. 253 00:26:19,180 --> 00:26:22,270 I've chosen some examples from Oxford to make the point. 254 00:26:25,380 --> 00:26:29,370 Family historians whose ancestors are likely to be represented in the collection. 255 00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:33,930 Performers, tradespeople, artists and so on can use all names indexed fairly easily. 256 00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:46,710 Optical character recognition software has transformed access to the textual contents of letterpress ephemera. 257 00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:58,110 Previously underexplored. So I searched for the words Pon Technica and that brings us to its origins as a bazaar with arcades used to store furniture. 258 00:26:59,140 --> 00:27:02,380 The collection includes not only a description of this new phenomenon, 259 00:27:03,070 --> 00:27:11,950 but the regulations for the storage of wine and cellars and an advertisement for Smith's patent Metallic Chimney Linings, 260 00:27:12,190 --> 00:27:15,580 which was the sixth and last item on the document we first saw. 261 00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:22,030 I just put that at the top there. The pan apparently had 150 of these chimney linings. 262 00:27:22,330 --> 00:27:23,530 And on the side, 263 00:27:23,530 --> 00:27:30,910 typical of ephemera tells us that the metallic chimney lining will supersede the odious practice of sweeping chimneys by climbing buoys, 264 00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:34,240 prices and illustrations. 265 00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:42,070 I'm sure it's much more this much more than you could possibly hope to find in the contemporary press or in secondary literature. 266 00:27:43,210 --> 00:27:48,280 Clearly, a Chinese pun Technica was added a few years later at the same address that we have. 267 00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:55,380 The predecessor of the modern meaning of the term. With the horse drawn furniture removal cart. 268 00:27:56,500 --> 00:28:06,580 With apologies for the poor slide in that case. So this brings us to genius, which though 1206 results in a keyword search of the ProQuest project, 269 00:28:07,930 --> 00:28:12,640 it is rare for textual ephemera to be used in body exhibitions. 270 00:28:12,940 --> 00:28:20,500 Usually they provide some welcome colour or images, but this element was not needed in Steven Hebron's very visually attractive displays. 271 00:28:21,010 --> 00:28:26,350 Genius is a difficult concept too in terms of the ephemera as it is usually somewhat retrospective. 272 00:28:26,860 --> 00:28:32,470 Steven has focussed instead on the misuse of the term genius by unscrupulous advertisers and promoters. 273 00:28:33,130 --> 00:28:39,660 To remind you of some of the items he selected. He states. 274 00:28:39,660 --> 00:28:45,540 In the caption, Lavie asks What the ephemera of our lives as dots and called it has to do with genius, 275 00:28:45,540 --> 00:28:50,310 which is exceptionally rare and stands apart from the ordinary concerns of daily life. 276 00:28:50,820 --> 00:28:53,010 Ever since the world acquired this meaning, however, 277 00:28:53,010 --> 00:28:59,100 sales people have had no scruples about using it for their own ends and have cheerfully called upon it when promoting something. 278 00:28:59,460 --> 00:29:02,940 It is a sign of the extent to which the word has woven its way into the language 279 00:29:02,940 --> 00:29:06,630 that it may be used to describe the highest reaches of creative achievement. 280 00:29:06,900 --> 00:29:11,729 What is set to stand the test of time and equally find a place in the more ephemeral worlds 281 00:29:11,730 --> 00:29:15,510 of fashion and the market supporting the hyperbole of the salesperson and the critic. 282 00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:31,019 More of the ISS. And I can't leave the subject to the U.S. as to which of them are put without mentioning ephemeral studies and material culture, 283 00:29:31,020 --> 00:29:33,930 because this has become a study field in its own right. 284 00:29:35,620 --> 00:29:42,339 As I mentioned, there is a centre for a feminist studies of reading and encyclopaedia of ephemera and thriving ephemera societies in Britain, 285 00:29:42,340 --> 00:29:48,100 the USA, France, what it's called Bolivia, Papua, Australia, New Zealand and Denmark. 286 00:29:50,150 --> 00:29:57,920 So what is currently happening in the collection? Our work is a microcosm of the library ready acquisitions, cataloguing, inquiries, outreach. 287 00:29:58,220 --> 00:30:02,600 I'm basically on my own, but have a wonderful team of volunteers, some of whom you can see. 288 00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:10,280 In this flight with some visitors from Sweden and some of whom are present in this room. 289 00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:13,700 They all have their own projects are huge help. 290 00:30:14,870 --> 00:30:23,240 Our office is now in the Western Library. That's it. The top left readers look at the material in the rare books of manuscripts reading room. 291 00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:25,560 A major part of the work at the moment. 292 00:30:25,580 --> 00:30:31,310 Having moved the collection out of the new library four years ago, is preparing for its return to the Western Library. 293 00:30:32,150 --> 00:30:36,020 Some of my volunteers are sorting the backlog of pre 1960 ephemera. 294 00:30:36,290 --> 00:30:36,920 At the moment, 295 00:30:37,550 --> 00:30:46,610 another volunteer present here processes the library's book jackets and that includes all the dependent libraries others are cataloguing. 296 00:30:48,080 --> 00:30:53,570 We now have a new web interface. So one of them is cataloguing book plates. 297 00:30:53,660 --> 00:31:01,760 Also here present and others are cataloguing postcards and a new collection of games which we acquired called The Bottom Collection. 298 00:31:02,570 --> 00:31:10,310 Modern ephemera is also thought of by a volunteer. We acquire antiquarian ephemera by purchase and donation, including whole collections. 299 00:31:11,520 --> 00:31:14,819 New collections recently acquired all the collection of Gaines, 300 00:31:14,820 --> 00:31:20,580 the John Fraser collection of propaganda postcards and most recently, a large collection of trade cards and buildings. 301 00:31:21,600 --> 00:31:25,320 And as well as that, that's really an exhibition where the collection is not represented. 302 00:31:25,770 --> 00:31:31,230 We've spoken of the genius exhibition Dress Clock for Coming Beauty display. 303 00:31:31,470 --> 00:31:37,380 It's going to be a vaccination display and a major exhibition on history and entertainment, and they will all feature the collection. 304 00:31:38,250 --> 00:31:42,180 We even made it into one an Arthurian legend through a theatre program. 305 00:31:44,570 --> 00:31:52,130 That's an advantage of the Western Library. It's a seminar room for curators can introduce ephemera as a resource to new generations of scholars. 306 00:31:52,340 --> 00:31:59,780 We work closely with the English and history of art faculty, and I have history of art students on curatorial placement each year. 307 00:32:01,780 --> 00:32:06,880 And finally, these days it is easy and fashionable to promote collections through social media. 308 00:32:07,150 --> 00:32:10,810 I have limited time for these, but plenty of enthusiasm. 309 00:32:11,290 --> 00:32:18,489 So we have a John Johnson Collection blog about the collection and a Summer Resources blog about other collections which is tagged. 310 00:32:18,490 --> 00:32:26,350 Of course, I tweet and retweet more often, retweet, and those feed through to a delicious page. 311 00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:34,690 I did eventually establish a Facebook page and I use Instagram to showcase our backlog finds. 312 00:32:36,230 --> 00:32:39,350 So this is the end of my tale, if you will excuse the pun. 313 00:32:40,220 --> 00:32:45,020 But what next? Oh, for crystal ball, as far as I'm concerned, personally, 314 00:32:45,020 --> 00:32:50,520 I want to look backwards as well as forwards and document the history of the collection as well as getting it to an as good state as possible. 315 00:32:50,540 --> 00:32:52,850 Physically, under terms of online finding AIDS, 316 00:32:53,690 --> 00:32:58,159 we have some rest of all travelled a long way and we have all contributed on our various ways to making it 317 00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:04,430 unthinkable to exclude ephemera from the historic record for generation of future generations of future scholars. 318 00:33:04,970 --> 00:33:11,600 It is undeniable that new technologies are enabling ephemera to leap out of dusty corners of institutions onto our screens, 319 00:33:12,350 --> 00:33:16,190 and as a result, the usefulness of ephemera to inform historical research is growing. 320 00:33:18,670 --> 00:33:25,390 Ephemera have taken their rightful place here as elsewhere as evidential data alongside books, manuscripts, maps and music. 321 00:33:25,630 --> 00:33:29,410 Not bad when you consider that they were being eliminated in the 1930s. 322 00:33:30,100 --> 00:33:33,400 John Thompson, who once wrote that he dropped his collection A Form of mine, 323 00:33:33,730 --> 00:33:39,070 a miniature typographic wing of the Bodleian, was, in my humble opinion, not only a pioneer, but a visionary. 324 00:33:39,430 --> 00:33:44,890 I hope that he would be pleased with this revolution and above all, the youth which scholars are making of his collection. 325 00:33:45,220 --> 00:33:45,670 Thank you.