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Ephemera

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For other uses, see Ephemera (disambiguation).
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A picture of an invitation to the Japanese embassy in Iceland
Collecting
Terms
Topics

Ephemera (singular: ephemeron) are any transitory written or printed matter not meant to be retained or preserved. The word derives from the Greek ephemeros, meaning "lasting only one day, short-lived".[1] Some collectible ephemera are advertising trade cards, airsickness bags, bookmarks, catalogues, greeting cards, letters, pamphlets, postcards, posters, prospectuses, defunct stock certificates or tickets, and zines.

Etymology

Ephemera (ἐφήμερα) is a noun, the plural neuter of ephemeron and ephemeros, Greek and New Latin for ἐπί – epi "on, for" and ἡμέρα – hemera "day" with the ancient sense extending to the mayfly and other short lived insects and flowers and for something which lasts a day or a short period of time.[2]

Printed ephemera

A 1798 printed broadside advertising the availability of a stallion for horse-breeding

In library and information science, the term ephemera also describes the class of published single-sheet or single page documents which are meant to be thrown away after one use. This classification excludes simple letters and photographs with no printing on them, which are considered manuscripts or typescripts. Large academic and national libraries and museums may collect, organize, and preserve ephemera as history. A particularly large and important example of such an archive is the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera[3] at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Over 2,000 images from the John Johnson Collection are available to search online for free at VADS[4] and more than 65,000 items are available online.[5] The extensive Laura Seddon Greeting Card Collection from the Manchester Metropolitan University gathers 32,000 Victorian and Edwardian greeting cards and 450 Valentine's Day cards dating from the early nineteenth century, printed by the major publishers of the day.[6] The Ephemera Kabinett at the Los-Angeles–based Institute of Cultural Inquiry contains 'first' items from cultural turning points of the last two decades, such as a copy of the first Marvel comic in which a lead character comes out of the closet and one of the first AIDS red ribbons.[7]

Video and audio ephemera

By extension, video ephemera and audio ephemera refer to transitory audiovisual matter not intended to be retained or preserved. Surprisingly, the great bulk of video and audio expression has, until recently, been ephemeral. Early TV broadcasts were not preserved (indeed, the technology to preserve them postdates the invention of television). Even if radio and television stations preserve archives of their broadcasts, those backcatalogs are inaccessible in practice to the general public, leaving it to a small number of underground tape traders to exchange the rare, lucky moments when something unexpected or historical came across the air.

An article on the Ephemera Society of America website notes

Printed ephemera gave way to audio and video ephemera in the twentieth century. ... These present even more of a preservation problem than printed materials. Although seldom made available for libraries, when videotapes are acquired for archival preservation they are found to be made on low quality tape, poorly processed, and damaged from abuse by users.[8]

The large capacity and reach provided by resources such as the Internet Archive and YouTube have made finding and sharing video ephemera (past and present) dramatically easier.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ephemera
  2. ^ "Ephemera". The Free Dictionary. Retrieved 6 October 2016.
  3. ^ Bodley.ox.ac.uk
  4. ^ VADS (the Visual Arts Data Service)
  5. ^ Johnjohnson.chadwyck.co.uk
  6. ^ "MMU Special Collections - Victorian Ephemera". Manchester Metropolitan University. Retrieved November 8, 2013.
  7. ^ Florenkowsky, Emilie. "Inquiry into the Institute of Cultural Inquiry." Meta magazine, 2011.
  8. ^ "'I Like Ike': Collecting Political Ephemera", Faye Philips

References

  • Printed Ephemera: The Changing Uses of Type and Letterforms in English and American Printing, John Lewis, Ipswich, Suffolk, Eng.: W. S. Cowell, 1962
  • The Encyclopedia of Ephemera: A Guide to the Fragmentary Documents of Everyday Life for the Collector, Curator, and Historian by Maurice Rickards et alia. London: The British Library; New York: Routledge, 2000.
  • Fragments of the Everyday: A Book of Australian Ephemera by Richard Stone (2005, ISBN 0-642-27601-3)
  • Twyman, Michael (August 2002). "Ephemera: whose responsibility are they?". Library and Information Update. 1 (5): 54–55. ISSN 1476-7171.
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