From Here to Ephemerality: Fugitive Sources in Libraries, Archives, and Museums: The 48th Annual RBMS Preconference

Abstract

For too long, institutions have treated their collections of ephemera as impediments rather than assets. They considered that ephemera had intrinsically less research value than books or manuscripts, that it was difficult to store and access, and that it often came in collections so large and unwieldy that they would never be adequately cataloged or inventoried. Vast troves of broadsides, handbills, and circulars languished unsorted in boxes, and the existence of these collections was seldom advertised to potential researchers, and sometimes carefully hidden from them. And yet some scholars took strong interest in these types of materials, some collectors and ...