Access to Uncataloged 18th- and 19th-Century Ephemera in the Collections of the Library Company of Philadelphia

FAIN: PW-50619-10

Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA 19107-5679)
James N. Green (Project Director: July 2009 to August 2012)

Cataloging of 92 collections of ephemera, totaling about 27,500 items on American society and culture in the 18th and 19th centuries; a selection of 5,000 items would be digitized and mounted on the Library Company's Web site.

The Library Company seeks funding to catalog, conserve, and selectively digitize its uncataloged and recently donated collections of printed and graphic ephemera from the 18th and 19th centuries. These collections, which include materials such as broadsides, blank forms, trade cards, advertisements, almanacs, chromolithographs, photographs, and postcards, constitute a rich primary source for historians. The Library Company holds one of the largest, most important, and most varied collections of 18th- and 19th-century ephemera in any American library. This project will fully integrate our ephemera collections by linking them in our catalogs and programming to our already established collection strengths in several humanities fields, particularly visual culture, business and economic history, the history of medicine, German-Americana, women's history, the history of printing, and Philadelphia iconography.