Links to Other Websites

Centre for Ephemera Studies The Centre - the first of its kind in the world - is housed in and administered by the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication of the University of Reading.
The Ephemera Society of America A non-profit organization formed in 1980 to encourage the preservation and study of paper ephemera.
St Bride Printing Library (UK) is one of the specialist public reference libraries of the Corporation of London. Its world-famous collections cover printing and related subjects: paper and binding, graphic design and typography, typefaces and calligraphy, illustration and printmaking, publishing and book-selling, the social and economic aspects of the printing, book, newspaper and magazine trades.
Museum of London The largest city museum in the world, telling the fascinating story of London from prehistoric times to the present day.
Musée de l'imprimerie de Lyon Lyon’s Museum of Printing is one of Europe’s most important historical museums in the field of graphic arts and trade. It contains a significant collection of books, old documents, machines and tools from the invention of printing up to the twentieth century and is particularly strong on French sixteenth-century printing. An educational programme is run with frequent exhibitions, including ones on ephemera.
Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising Featuring over 12,000 original items from the Robert Opie Collection. The history of consumer culture is revealed decade by decade in the “time tunnel”, from Victorian times to the present day. Discover the trends of daily life, the revolution in shopping habits, the groceries, sweets and household goods, the changes in taste and tempo, the advent of motoring, aviation, radio and television, the gradual emancipation of women and the effects of two world wars.
The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association Founded in 1906 the ABA is the oldest professional body of its kind in the world and runs a small but select number of book fairs each year.
American Memory From the Library of Congress, “American Memory” is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections.
The Women’s Library exists to document and explore women’s lives in Britain, in the past, now and in the future. It inspires learning and debate and is an international resource for women’s history research.
Collage An image database containing 20,000 works from the Guildhall Library and Guildhall Art Gallery London.
The History of Advertising Trust Archive HAT Archive conserves the UK's advertising, marketing/retail, media and public relations heritage and makes it available for study. With over two million items, it is believed to be the largest collection in its field worldwide.
PeoplePlay UK - Theatre History Online aims to bring theatre history to life on the web and increase access to the Theatre Museum’s collections for the non-specialist user. The site contains 1500 digitised images as well as structured learning packs offering guided tours through the collection and timeline histories.
Collect Britain - Putting history in place Travel through time and place with Collect Britain’s panorama of images from the British Library’s famous collections including the Evanion Collection Of Ephemera.
Collect Britain has selected some 2,000 pieces from the Evanion collection to represent the diversity of trades, products and services that made up the Victorian business world. They range from trade cards to Christmas cards; from shop catalogues to restaurant menus; from the fashions of the day for ladies and gentlemen to the latest models in stoves, boilers and other equipment, domestic and industrial. Most date from the late 1860s to 1895, but the product names are often still familiar today: Pears Soap, Twinings Tea, Bovril and Vaseline.
The Institute of Conservation(ICON) is the leading organisation devoted solely to the conservation of paper and related materials. Paper conservation is sophisticated and diverse and one of IPC’s main objectives is the advancement of the craft and science of paper conservation both within the profession and in terms of public awareness.
The Chantry Library, Oxford The Judith Chantry Library and Resource Centre, maintained by the Institute of Conservation, is the only professional conservation library owned and run by a professional body. Named after Judith Chantry (IPC’s long serving Librarian) the Library houses books on subjects such as art history, book binding, book history, collection care, conservation, paper history, printing and reprographics.
Political Ephemera Online: Commonwealth and Latin American Archives Project catalogues and promotes the collections of political ephemera from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the Institute for the Study of the Americas in London. The materials held in the Political Archives at ICS and ISA constitute a particular type of ephemera. The majority fit the criteria of being transient, but they document not everyday life but an aspect of life - politics - usually at a particular time - election time. As such they are an invaluable guide to the debates and controversies that seemed important to competing parties at the time, rather than those that have since been judged to be significant.
The Caird Library is the largest and most comprehensive reference library of its kind in the world, covering every aspect of maritime history.
Moving Here 200 years of migration to England. Free online access to original items from 30 museums, archives and libraries.
Vintage Labels - The Lost Art of Travel is dedicated to the history and lost art of the luggage label as visualized by the world’s hotels, airlines, railroads and ocean liner companies. The site catalogs all aspects of vintage travel-related luggage labels, the artists and companies that popularized and immortalized these images.
The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 - 1920 presents over 9,000 images, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. The materials, drawn from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, provide a significant and informative perspective on the early evolution of this most ubiquitous feature of modern American business and culture.
The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera is one of the most important collections of printed ephemera in the world. It was assembled by John de Monins Johnson between c1923 and 1956 and was housed at the Oxford University Press until its transfer to the Bodleian Library in 1968.
Heritage Scrapbooks is a digital archive of vintage scrapbooks dating from 1700 onwards. The scrapbooks are from Dr. Gary Kelly’s private collection, as well as from generous patrons willing to share their collections online with the rest of the world.
The Bowyer Bible Donated to the town of Bolton by the Heywood family in 1948, the Bowyer Bible is a unique and remarkable work. Consisting of 45 volumes the Bible is filled with illustrations by some of the greatest artists of all time and contains over 6000 engravings painstakingly compiled over a period of 30 years by Robert Bowyer, Royal portrait painter and publisher.
From History to Her Story:Yorkshire women's lives on-line Celebrating the lives of Yorkshire women from 1100 to the present day, it presents rarely seen archive material in an innovative and interesting way. The website reflects the diversity of women’s lives and commemorates the contributions they have made to all areas of society, including education, politics, music and literature. For the first time women’s personal experiences are accessible to all through their letters, diaries, notes and medical case books.
NYPL Digital Gallery The New York Public Library provides access to over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities from its own collections including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera and more.
ViewFinder: on-line image resource for England’s history Photographs from the National Monuments Record’s important collections are presented seamlessly on ViewFinder, allowing users to search across the whole archive at once. The Picture Gallery and Stories contain illustrations of the industrial age, social history (including the Henry W Taunt Collection), architecture and archaeology, dating from the 1840s to the present day.
Leeds Playbills An opportunity to view playbills in the Local Studies Library collection from a wide range of Leeds Theatres such as The City Varieties, The Grand, The Princess and the Theatre Royal that provides a unique insight into theatre life in Leeds between 1781 and the 1990’s.
Spellman Collection: Victorian Sheet Music Covers The Spellman Collection was donated to Reading University Library by Doreen and Sidney Spellman of London and comprised approximately 1,650 mounted covers, 650 unmounted, and 150 complete with music, making 2,500 items in total. 800 digitised images are available here.
The History of Music Sheet Covers The ability to mass produce music covers owes a lot to the invention of lithography. Lithographs were produced using wax or crayons to draw the designs on a specially prepared flat stone which was then inked. The earliest music sheets to be illustrated by lithography were produced in the UK in about 1820 and were coloured by hand.
Historic American Sheet Music The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University holds a significant collection of 19th and early 20th century American sheet music. The Historic American Sheet Music Project provides access to digital images of 3042 pieces from the collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.
The Word on the Street Discover early news stories and ballads that informed and entertained Scots between 1650 and 1910 as you search or browse The National Library of Scotland’s online collection of nearly 1,800 broadsides.
Tyne and Wear Museums' Collections Online Find 15,000 images of objects from Tyne and Wear Museums’ collections which has regional, national and international content as well as a strong emphasis on the North East reflecting Tyne and Wear’s geographical location in the U.K.
The Ephemera of John Smith Examples of ephemeral publications collected by John Smith of Crutherland during his career as bookseller, town councillor, estate owner and citizen of Glasgow from the Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department.
Trade Card Collector Study Group Ephemera site dedicated to Victorian advertising cards : chromo lithographic cards edited and distributed by large companies but also by the grocer at the corner ... calendars, comical scenes sets, educative cards, puzzle cards, menu cards. Catalogues online for Liebig Extract of Meat company, Chocolates Guérin Boutron, Cibils Meat Extract, Au Bon Marche trade card collection and a printer catalogue for the Paris printers from 1870 to 1910.
Allan and Ferguson’s Views in Glasgow Glasgow University Library’s Special Collections Department also owns Illustrated Letter Paper Comprising a Series of Views in Glasgow, a rare nineteenth-century publication featuring some of the city’s landmark buildings, many of which no longer exist.
“Very Ill!” 19th Century Medical Caricature Enjoy the many faces of medical caricature in 19th–century England & France in this on-line exhibition from the University of Virginia. Nineteenth-century medicine provided caricaturists with a wealth of material. Artists humorously exaggerated medical conditions and physical characteristics. Bulbous noses, protruding stomachs, and hunched backs were some of the more common features drawn to extraordinary proportions.
Pure Magic! Evanion Collection of Ephemera Over 1,800 adverts and posters from Victorian daily life, collected by the stage magician and ventriloquist, Henry Evans - Evanion to his audience.
Jim Crow Museum The purpose of the Jim Crow Museum, at Ferris State University, is to educate visitors about race relations in the United States. It has a 4,000-piece collection of racist artifacts gathered, catalogued and donated by Dr. David Pilgrim, professor of Sociology at the University, uses Jim Crow era objects to show that racism was wrong – and is wrong. Many of the artifacts are offensive; and Pilgrim believes that these items must be viewed and understood without sugar coating.
Codices Electronici Sangallenses The purpose of the “Codices Electronici Sangallenses” (Digital Abbey Library of St. Gallen) is to provide access to the medieval codices in the Abbey Library of St. Gallen by creating a virtual library.
The National Fairground Archive is a unique collection of photographic, printed, manuscript and audiovisual material covering all aspects of the culture of travelling showpeople, their organisation as a community, their social history and everyday life; and the artefacts and machinery of fairgrounds.
National Co-operative Archive is located in central Manchester and is home to a wide array of records relating to the history of the worldwide co-operative movement.
Working Class Movement Library is a collection of English language books, periodicals, pamphlets, archives and artefacts, concerned with the activities, expression and enquiries of the labour movement, its allies and its enemies, since the late 1700s.
The Huntley & Palmers Collection is the archive that was formed by the famous Reading biscuit company during its 150 year history and shows the development of the company and the impact it had on Reading and its people.
Broadway: The American Musical This online exhibition, drawn from the holdings of the John Hay Library, is a small taste of the thousands of musical plays that have appeared on the New York stage in the last century and a half. Drawn from the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays, the Sheet Music Collection, the Manuscripts Collections, the Starred Book Collection, and the Robert J. Tierney Collection of Entertainment Memorabilia, it includes examples of scores, librettos, sheet music, souvenir albums and playbills.
Kensitas Woven Silk Flowers A web site by a passionate collector of these exquisite silk cards given away free in the 1930’s with Kensitas cigarettes.
The Firework Museum Many examples of firework posters, firework labels, sparkler packets and printed ephemera.