On Friday 26 July 2024, I gave a talk to my colleagues at the Central City Library called 'Ephemera A-Z: an introduction'. I am relatively new to the Associate Curator Ephemera role and the staff talk was a way for me to explore parts of the collection I had not looked at before. This blog post is a version of my curator talk.
There were a few things I wanted to share in my talk. One was to show staff how ephemera is arranged, described, shelved and accessed. I also wanted to show some samples of ephemera which have been digitised and are accessible on
Kura Heritage Collections Online. Most of the images of ephemera in my talk (and in this blog post) were carefully scanned or photographed by me for the purpose of the talk. So, those images are not available as digitised items on Kura. The talk was a chance for me to explore parts of the collection I had not looked at before and to think about why and how ephemera might be used by researchers, students, artists, family historians and other library users. An 'A to Z' approach to the subject areas covered in our ephemera collection seemed like an effective way to both learn more about the collection and provide an overview to people who do not know the collection well.
Firstly, what is ephemera? Ephemera can be described as printed material originally intended to have a limited lifespan. Some types of ephemera include posters, invitations, programmes, tickets, notices, menus, postcards, leaflets and flyers. Ephemera can help people learn more about the political and social history of a time and place.
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Image: Frigidaire Electric Ranges flyer, 1950s-1960s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections,
Eph-Appliances.
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Image: Auckland Harbour Bridge toll ticket, 1984. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections,
Eph-Auckland Harbour Bridge. |
The ephemera collection at the Central City Library contains over 370,000 items of printed
material from the 1860s to the present day, with the majority of the collection
dating from the 1970s onwards. Currently, the collection covers 179 subject areas. It is one of the largest collections of (particularly Auckland related) theatre material within the country. Classical music ephemera has been collected since the late 1800s and the collection has grown to include popular music produced and performed by predominantly New Zealand-based musicians and bands. Performing arts categories like dance, comedy and festivals are also a strength.
The collection is held in forty vertical filing cabinets, plus there are flat cabinets for posters and outsize material. There is no manual for describing ephemera. Each organisation has their own approach. We arrange our collection according to how people ask to view material: by subject.
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| Image: One of the drawers holding archival folders of ephemera. |
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| Image: An open folder of ephemera. |
Once a folder is getting too full we will decide on a way to divide the folder. That may be by geographic region or by venue or by a musical group name or, very commonly, by dividing the folder into decades. Some subjects only have one or two folders. Other subjects, like music or theatre, have thousands of folders.
An index to Auckland Libraries Ephemera Collection and digitised samples can be found on
Kura Heritage Collections Online. Three quarters of the collection is described at item level. This means, if you take
a play programme as an example, the item record will include the title of the show, people involved in the production, dates, venues, and the type of ephemera held (for example, programme, A4 poster, flyer).
In
Research Central and the
Heritage Collections Reading Room, there are study folders which contain facsimile versions of ephemera in our collection. The topics the study folders cover are high school curriculum perennial favourites such as the Springbok tours, World Wars and nuclear issues. The study folders protect the original ephemera from overhandling.
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| Image: Examples of 'mini me' posters on A6 cards. |
Another way of accessing parts of the poster collection, which are not yet online, is through what are known as the 'mini me' A6 postcard versions of some of the larger posters. These facsimile versions are easy to flick through and are a very useful access point.
Let's look through some examples of ephemera in the collection and a few subject areas covered. Starting with 'A' for 'Animals'.
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Image: SAFE (Save Animals From Experiments) leaflet, 1980s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Animals and animal welfare.
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Save Animals From Experiments (SAFE) was formed in Auckland in 1978. The organisation campaigned against vivisection (the practice of performing operations on live animals for the purpose of experimentation or scientific research) and in 1982 presented a petition with 120,000 signatures to the government. Scientists fought back and persuaded parliament to allow animal experiments to continue under stricter guidelines. In the 1980s, the Animals Protection Act 1960 had amendments made to it which introduced codes of ethical conduct and an ethics advisory committee to regulate experiments on animals.
In 1987, SAFE changed its name to Save Animals From Exploitation to reflect a broader approach to animal rights issues. They began major campaigns against battery farming of chickens and the use of crates for pigs, with considerable success.
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| Image: Dishmaster leaflet, 1940s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Appliances. |
The page above is from a 1940s leaflet promoting the Dishmaster dishwasher. Advertising material for appliances can show us who the audience for the products were and provides an insight into social dynamics at the time. The formal clothing of the people in the advertisement above indicate they are wealthy: a pearl necklace, nice dress and suit. Owning a dishwasher in the 1940s would have been a luxury.
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Image: Dishmaster leaflet, 1940s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Appliances.
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Inside the leaflet there is an image of the open Dishmaster machine. It looks like a top loader washing machine with dishes precariously placed inside baskets in quite a haphazard way.
We selectively collect ephemera for subjects like 'Appliances' which we have collected since the early twentieth century and continue to be of interest to different customer groups, like historians and design students. It is interesting to look through the collection and see what sort of gadgets and technology was popular at certain times, what we have stopped using and what we continue to use.
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Image: Philips 'Philishave' electric shaver leaflet, 1950s-1960s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Appliances.
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Image: Tellus vacuum cleaner leaflet, 1950s-1960s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections,
Eph-Appliances. |
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Image: Ultimate roaster-frypan leaflet, 1960s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections,
Eph-Appliances. |
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| Image: Atlas flat-top freezer leaflet, 1970s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Appliances. |
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| Image: Brother fax machine, 2000s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Appliances. |
In the mid-twentieth century, advertising material for appliances were sometimes framed as educational resources aimed at children. Ephemera from this time was one of the many ways people sourced printed information before the invention of the internet. Advertising material aimed at children (and sometimes connected with educational tasks or assignments) usually had another audience: the adults in the household with purchasing power. The pamphlet below was sent to a student in 1959 after he made an enquiry to the manufacturer of the clothes dryer: Fisher & Paykel. The student had chosen the clothes dryer as his subject for a school project and found the company's details in 'The New Zealand Trades' Alphabet' book.
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| Image: Fisher & Paykel Whiteway Automatic Clothes Dryer booklet, 1959. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Appliances. |
The Auckland Harbour Bridge material below includes a ticket to the official opening of the bridge and a leaflet which has information about the proposed Auckland Harbour Bridge Shared Path and Sea Path. Sometimes ephemera includes information about plans or ideas which do not come to fruition.
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Image: Auckland Harbour Bridge official opening ticket, 1959. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Auckland Harbour Bridge.
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| Image: Auckland Harbour Bridge Shared Path and Sea Path leaflet 2019. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Auckland Harbour Bridge. |
'Balls' are another subject covered in the ephemera collection. Different forms of entertainment and leisure activities can be viewed in the collection. From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, balls were a social amenity - a popular way for people to spend time together, meet new people, dance and have a fun night out. They could also be more formal occasions celebrating a particular event or occasion.
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Image: Ellerslie Catholic ball souvenir programme, 1952. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Balls.
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| Image: Ellerslie Catholic ball souvenir programme, 1952. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Balls. |
In the ball invites below, you will see one finishes at 1am (a pretty good end time for a 1950s do!) and one is addressed to John Barr who was the chief librarian at Auckland Public Library from 1913 to 1952. Barr instituted significant changes and steadily campaigned for a free library service in the city. The library has grown its ephemera collection from librarian donations for a long time. Sometimes ball invites include the menu being served at the event. At the first radio-television ball in 1964, we learn that curried lamb and rice and whitebait fritters were on the menu as well as a decent assortment of beverages, including scotch, gin, Pimms, rum, brandy and punch.
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| Image: The Mater Misericordiae Hospital Student Nurses’ Association annual ball invite, Wednesday 26 August 1953. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Balls. |
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| Image: Local Bodies Officers’ ball invite, Friday 13 May 1955. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Balls. |
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Image: The first radio-television ball invite, 12 June 1964. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Balls.
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Aucklanders support national and international causes and the ephemera collection reflects the ways people in Tāmaki Makaurau protest, fundraise and petition for causes they feel strongly about. Below we see an example of fundraising for people affected by the Christchurch earthquakes. The fundraising sale happened in April 2011 - not long after the Tuesday 22 February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch. Libraries and other memory institutions collect current ephemera as it will be a record of events in society for future generations. It is much easier to collect material at the time events are happening rather than trying to source ephemera a year, or ten years or more, down the track.
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Image: Brave ChCh liquidation sale flyer, April 2011. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections,
Eph-Christchurch Earthquakes.
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Technology related ephemera can be interesting as changes in this area happen so rapidly. In the 1980s it was not very common for a household to own a computer. It was new technology and the public had questions about how to use a personal computer and what was required to own one. In the leaflet below some of the questions answered inside include: 'Do I have to be good at maths to use my computer?' and 'Do I have to have air conditioning in the room I want to use my computer in?'
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| Image: Everything you wanted to know about computers... leaflet, 1980s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Computers and computing. |
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Image: Microcomputer exhibition: Open day poster, 19 June 1982. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Computers and computing.
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The leaflet below is promoting an upcoming seminar: 'It’s your chance to see a 32-bit computer so affordable you can realistically dedicate one to every technical task.' The photograph of John Oster, HP 9000 Technical Computer Specialist, looking cool in his dark sunglasses, reminds me of more recent tech figures and how they can end up celebrities, like Apple's Steve Jobs.
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| Image: Hewlett-Packard seminar: A new approach to 32 bit computing - The HP 9000, 1983. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Computers and computing. |
The leaflet below is about the brief 'carless days' initiative. Carless days for motor vehicles were introduced in Aotearoa on 30 July 1979 to combat a drop in oil production which happened in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. A carless day sticker with a day of the week written on it, say ‘Thursday’, was put on the windscreen of your car and meant that nobody could drive the vehicle on that day. One of my colleagues mentioned that he remembered some people (who could afford it) got around the carless day requirement by buying a second vehicle. Carless days did little to reduce petrol consumption and were scrapped in May 1980.
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| Image: Car-less days notice, 1979. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Energy. |
Another item under the 'Energy' category is the Shell petrol flyer from the 1970s. The petroleum tree is a diagram showing how many products are made from petroleum and promoting the wide ranging uses of petroleum. In the 1970s, the research conducted to understand, tackle and mitigate the effects of climate change was not as widely known as it is today.
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| Image: The petroleum tree flyer, 1970s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Energy. |
In 2013, the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Act saw New Zealand become the thirteenth country in the world – and the first in the Asia-Pacific region – to allow same-sex couples to marry. The two pieces of ephemera below show how different groups who were for and against the change to legislation tried to get the public to make submissions to support their cause. The ephemera collection can cover different political viewpoints and societal opinions.
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| Image: Family First leaflet, 2013. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Family – Marriage Amendment Bill, 2013. |
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Image: Say “I do” to marriage equality in New Zealand postcard. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Family – Marriage Amendment Bill, 2013.
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'Fashion and hair' is a subject area in the ephemera collection which shows what services and clothing items were popular at different times - from £1 perms being offered in Parnell in 1957 to a flyer advertising a corsetiere consultant who was taking bookings for her visit to a store in Waiuku in 1950. I really like the Jockey underwear flyer below which offers illustrated advice for how to get the maximum comfort out of your underwear.
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| Image: Jockey underwear flyer, 1950s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Fashion and hair. |
The 'Film' subject area shows what movies Aucklanders were watching since the early twentieth century. We have a programme for the 1931 romantic comedy-drama film 'City Lights' which was written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. The leaflet below has a neat illustration of Hayward’s theatre in Avondale which is now known as the Hollywood Cinema. The building was originally the Avondale Public Hall and was built in 1867.
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| Image: Talkie programmes at Hayward’s Avondale leaflet, 1932. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Film |
Movies used to come with programmes which were similar to ones you would get when you saw a play. Often they were a decent sized booklet like the one below, for the film 'The Sound of Music'.
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| Image: Cover of The Sound of Music film programme, 1965. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Film. |
In the 'Food and drink' category we can find early examples of loyalty schemes. We are familiar with café loyalty schemes where you get a card stamped when you buy a coffee and once you buy ten coffees you get one free. Below we see an example of cash bonds which came with a packet of Choysa tea in the 1970s. You needed to collect 100 cash bond tokens to get $1 back.
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| Image: Choysa tea cash bond, 1970s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Food and drink. |
There are excellent examples of graphic design in the 'Food and drink' subject area.
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Image: Rabbit in jelly, roast mutton, and V.C. pineapple food labels, 1960s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Food and drink.
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In the 'Housing' section there is a 1970s flyer which starts with the statement 'Unite against gangster landlords'. At the end of the flyer there is a paragraph which encourages people to turn up outside courts to support people in activist groups who have been arrested, including members of the Progressive Youth Movement and the Polynesian Panther Party. There is ephemera across the decades which highlight the fight for tenants' rights.
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Image: Unite against gangster landlords flyer, 1970s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections,
Eph-Housing. |
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| Image: Fight rent hikes leaflet, 1988. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Housing. |
The
'Music' section of the ephemera collection is extensive and wide-ranging. It includes programmes, tickets, reviews, advertising material and posters. All of the music posters have been digitised and are accessible via
Kura Heritage Collections Online.
The Beatles performed at the Auckland Town Hall on 24 and 25 June 1964. New Zealand musicians and bands the Phantoms, Johnny Devlin, Alan Field, Johnny Chester and Sounds Incorporated also performed. The forty page programme has been completely digitised and is
accessible online.
Sometimes different formats in Heritage Collections have nice connections with each other. We have some neat ephemera connected to photography which can be useful for research into past Auckland photographers. 'Camerists' is an interesting word used in the Kodak Film ephemera below.
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| Image: Agfa leaflet, 1930s-1940s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Photography. |
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| Image: Kodak Film leaflet, 1930s-1940s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Photography. |
My colleague Xavier was given a tour of the ephemera collection by one of the ephemera librarians. Afterwards, because the theatre material is described at item level, Xavier was able to search for theatre group names his grandfather was involved with and look through the original ephemera. One programme he found, see below, included a signed full length portrait of his grandfather, William Forsman.
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Image: “Bless the Bride” souvenir programme cover, 1950. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Theatre-Dunedin Operatic Society.
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| Image: Inside pages of “Bless the Bride” souvenir programme, 1950. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Theatre-Dunedin Operatic Society. |
Xavier also found another programme from a different theatre company which featured his grandfather performing in the same musical, the following year. This programme (see images below) also included a portrait of his grandfather. Special finds!
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Image: "Bless the Bride" programme cover, 1951. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections,
Eph-Theatre-Christchurch Operatic Society. |
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Image: Inside pages of "Bless the Bride" programme, 1951. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections,
Eph-Theatre-Dunedin Operatic Society. |
As well as being important material for historians and students to add to their research, ephemera can be great to view from an art and design perspective. As these items below from the 'Transport' category demonstrate.
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| Image: Easter holidays timetable, 1933. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Transport. |
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| Image: North Island Main Trunk Railway brochure, 1970s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Transport. |
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| Image: Walk the tunnels, City Rail Link, Kids Activity Pack, 2019. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Transport. |
To end this small dive in to a very comprehensive (370,000 items plus!) collection I will end with a selection of items from the 'Zoos' subject area.
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| Image: Auckland Zoological Park booklet, 1960s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Zoos. |
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Image: Auckland Zoo adult ticket, 1982. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Zoos.
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Image: In the 1990’s Auckland Zoo brochure, 1990s. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections,
Eph-Zoos. |
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| Image: Celebrating tīeke saddleback poster, 2016. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, Eph-Zoos. |
If you would like to view ephemera in person,
please make an appointment to come in to the Heritage Collections Reading Room on level 2 of the Central City Library. If you have any enquiries or questions about the ephemera collection at Auckland Libraries please feel free to
contact us.
Author: Zoë Colling, Associate Curator Ephemera
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