---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Gabrielle Dean <gnodean(a)jhu.edu>
Date: Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 16:53
Dear colleagues,
I am seeking collaborators on a panel to propose to RBMS for the 2019
conference <http://rbms.info/blog/news-events/call-for-proposals-rbms-2019/>,
June 18-21 in Baltimore, the theme of which is Response and Responsibility:
Special Collections and Climate Change. Ideally, this panel would consist
of 3 to 4 presentations of case-studies on the topic of “ephemera and/or
trash.”
Historically, libraries have had difficulty gaining effective intellectual
and physical control over ephemera.* And there was not always an incentive
to do so. Produced cheaply, for transitory purposes, printed ephemera has
often been seen as inferior to books or periodicals, where greater
“cultural value” is believed to reside. Manuscript ephemera—unless it is
associated with someone famous—is even lower than that. Ephemera only
survives when a reader disregards its intended purpose: to be thrown away.
And yet, as Michael Twyman argues, “If we want to catch the spirit of a
period or flesh out the details of a particular occasion or situation,” or
understand the attitudes of a period or its language, ephemera is
essential; he notes, “studies of social and cultural history that discount
printed ephemera are about as representative of their fields as studies of
literature that take no account of the romantic novel or science fiction,
or histories of architecture that ignore domestic and industrial
buildings.” (“The Long Term Significance of Printed Ephemera,” *RBM* 9.1,
20, 57.) Precisely because of its low cost and “below the radar” status,
ephemera has often served the interests of poor, marginalized,
controversial, and radical communities. Ephemera teaches literacy,
organizes political protests, and spreads scandalous stories. Increasingly,
we find that ephemera can help us reveal and tell some of the stories that
never made it into the print culture vehicles dominated by elites.
Given the growing interest in ephemera and recognition of its cultural
value, how do we know what to “invest” in—when to rescue trashy bits of
paper from the floods of time? And when, given the immediate, long-term,
and environmental costs of stewarding those unruly bits of paper, is it
appropriate to throw something away? How do our description and
preservation standards, our research and teaching practices, stand up to
the challenges of ephemera? What do we do differently now with
ephemera—perhaps especially since the 2007 RMBS conference, *From Here to
Ephemerality: Fugitive Sources in Libraries, Archives, and Museums*
<http://rbms.info/conferences2/preconferences/2007/index.html>*?* And what
do we need to do to ensure that vital but elusive traces of the past are
preserved and interpretable in and for the future? Case-studies that engage
one or more of the topics below are especially welcome:
- Ephemera and social justice
- Digitization, digital tools, and ephemera
- The complexities of ephemera in collections: scope, scale, description
- Ephemera and historical reading practices
- The printing and circulation of ephemera
- Teaching with ephemera
- Preservation and access dilemmas and strategies
Please send a 250-word abstract of your proposed presentation, which should
discuss a specific collection, project, program, or activity, along with
your name, title, contact info, and a brief bio, by *Friday, July 27*, to
Gabrielle Dean, William Kurrelmeyer Curator of Rare Books & Manuscripts,
Johns Hopkins University, gnodean(a)jhu.edu.
*Ephemera is notoriously hard to define. For the purposes of this panel,
we’ll adopt the expanded definition used by the Ephemera Society of America
<http://www.ephemerasociety.org/def.html>, which is based on that used by
Maurice Rickards, “the minor transient documents of everyday life.” The
expanded definition does not include newspapers and other periodicals but
does include some categories of material such as souvenirs that were
designed to be kept.
Gabrielle Dean, PhD
William Kurrelmeyer Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts
The Sheridan Libraries <http://www.library.jhu.edu/#>
Johns Hopkins University
3400 North Charles
Baltimore MD 21218