Pamphlets and Ephemera as Social and Cultural History: Preserving an Alternative Print Tradition at the Tamiment Library

FAIN: PW-50301-09

New York University (New York, NY 10012-1019)
Michael H. Nash (Project Director: August 2008 to April 2012)
Chela Scott Weber (Project Director: April 2012 to December 2012)

The arrangement and description of one million items, with full cataloging of 1,200 monographs, 600 serials, and 1,100 pamphlets, from the Tamiment Library's collection on the history of labor and radicalism in the United States; 250 Internet-accessible Encoded Archival Description finding aids would also be developed linked to collection-level MARC records.

As the historical and American Studies literatures have been increasingly influenced by the work of social and cultural historians and students of material culture, scholars have discovered that ephemeral publications often document details of everyday life and forms of political participation that are not visible through traditional research collections. Research libraries with their emphases on the printed book, manuscript collection, and organizational archive have treated these materials as an after thought. The Tamiment Library's pamphlet and ephemera collection documenting the history of labor and radical politics has long been recognized as one of the most important archives of its kind in the United States. This project will rely on archival arrangement, description,and collection-level cataloging to make the Tamiment collections accessible to the research community.