Based at the East Central Georgia Regional Library, the African American Funeral Programs collection consists of over 1,000 funeral programs dated from 1933 to 2008. Most of the programs are from churches in Augusta, Georgia, and the surrounding area, with a few outliers coming from New York and Florida. These materials are tremendously important historical resources, as most programs contain a...

The good folks at the Dartmouth Digital Library Initiatives continue to offer a veritable cornucopia of printed ephemera, and this website will delight anyone with an interest in topics as wide-ranging as comics, Dr. Seuss, Russian placards, or the Arctic. Here visitors can make their way through nine digitized works, including "The Fortunes of Ferdinand Flipper." This particular item was...

"Ephemera" refers to those material items not intended to be kept for posterity, but rather to be used and discarded, including letters, advertisements, magazines, and postage stamps. Yet despite these items' intended disposability - or, perhaps, because of it - ephemera provides us with invaluable information regarding quotidian life of the past. This blog, maintained by the Ephemera Society -...

While it is still common to send postcards from one's travels, today more and more people might just opt to send images via their smartphones. But a century ago, major postcard companies produced hundreds of postcards for cities small and large. Milwaukee was no exception: years ago, visitors could send images of the Milwaukee County Zoo, the homes of Astor Street, or the 3rd Ward. This digital...

From the Newberry Library comes this online exhibition dedicated to ephemera and what these items can reveal about "different cultural values of the past: reading habits, consumer preferences, aesthetic sensibilities." Curated by Megan Kelly, Lindsey O'Brien, and Amanda Schriver, this exhibition is organized into nine categories, including Type Specimens, Ephemeral Chicago, and Ads, Ads, Ads....