ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 45 | June 2000
New home for Australian ephemera
A new stack area has been fitted out to house the Librarys large collection of Australian printed ephemera.
Gathered from various locations around the building, the boxes and folders which house brochures, handbills, leaflets, programs, invitations, menus, junk mail and the other elusive items which make up the ephemera collection, are now in their own dedicated stack area.
The stack is spacious and allows for generous expansion. The collection will continue to grow rapidly as long as advertising and information are distributed in ephemeral formats. Ephemera are collected selectively from the vast amount produced. It is not known exactly how many items of ephemera the National Library holds, but it would probably be well over 100 000 individual items from single sheet handbills picked up at a street demonstration through to large mail order catalogues and glossy theatre programs.
One section of the new stack is devoted to performing arts programs and ephemera such as subscription brochures, handbills and cast lists. This is known as the PROMPT collection and includes material from Australian performing arts companies and individual performers as well as those touring to Australia. There is also an emphasis on documenting Australians performing overseas. A list of all the files in this collection is being completed and will be available online through the Librarys home page. Minimal level cataloguing entries in the Librarys online catalogue (OPAC) exist for over 2000 files in the PROMPT collection. In addition, specialised holdings lists of selected files with particularly strong holdings are available through the home page. So far twelve such lists are available: www.nla.gov.au/collect/prompt.html.
The second section of the stack houses all the non-theatrical ephemera and includes four sequences:
Each sequence is controlled by a thesaurus, copies of which are available to users in the Library. It is hoped to be able to mount these thesauruses online in the near future.
The third area of the stack will house formed ephemera collections or large collections which warrant their own individual housing and treatment.
These will include the Sydney 2000 Olympics Collection, the Bicentennial 1988 Collection, collections of ephemera from each federal election and the Duckmanton Collection of local government insignia. Full cataloguing records on the Librarys OPAC and on Kinetica will be accorded these collections.
The development of a stack devoted to the proper housing of printed ephemera is a significant step for a large research and heritage library such as the National Library. For a genre of printed material which is commonly considered to be difficult and is usually neglected, the new stack bestows a welcome respectability on ephemera and provides greatly enhanced access.
Richard Stone
Right: Library staff member Mary Smith is pictured in the spacious new stack, fitted out to house the Library's Australian ephemera collection.
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: gateways@nla.gov.au