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Special collections, because of their very nature, need special consideration by library management. Discusses one part of special collection management which needs particular consideration, namely printed ephemera. This will perhaps be the greatest problem for local studies departments of public libraries; special libraries, because of their identification with their parent body, and its aims and objectives, do not have quite the same problems. However, all libraries concerned with acquiring printed ephemera need to consider certain aspects of the management of this material. Outlines some of these problems and issues, and briefly suggests possible courses of action which can be taken, based on current research into developing a collection policy for printed Welsh ephemera, carried out at the Department of Information and Library Studies at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth in conjunction with the National Library of Wales.

In January of this year I was engaged by the Social Science and Government Committee of the Social Science Research Council ‘to carry out a broad review of the present position regarding the provision of printed ephemera in the social sciences in national, university, public and specialist libraries in Great Britain’. In this paper I should like to give an account of some of the more important findings of my research and to offer for discussion a number of recommendations designed to rationalize the acquisition of these important primary sources, to improve access to them, to provide an effective means of acquainting researchers with their existence and location, and to ensure that future library policies are compatible with the known and potential needs of social scientists.

A series of online searches of the Harvard University Library System – which includes the Baker Library, Houghton Library and the Radcliffe Institute’s Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library – on the History of Women in America revealed nearly 1,000 archive and manuscript holdings on advertising and related topics. This paper aims to investigate the extent of these holdings, to assess their value to advertising and marketing historians and to explore their potential for encouraging future research on under-investigated topics and questions.

Described are the extensive and valuable special collections and other holdings related to advertising, business and marketing of the Harvard Library System. Also described are the availability of the holdings and recommendations for accessing and studying the collections and artifacts.

The research reported here supports an overall conclusion that the Harvard Library System holds an important place among the world’s repositories of valuable historical advertisements and marketing ephemera. The research also supports four specific conclusions regarding the historical value of Harvard’s collections and archives. First, some of the collections offer access to artifacts and items from an under-investigated period – the first half of the 19th century. Second, many of the collections are international in scope. Third, the collections represent a wide array of 19th century non-periodical advertisements and ephemera, such as trade cards, posters and theatrical playbills. Fourth, and most important, the collections offer significant potential for addressing, among other under-investigated topics, the important role of women in the development of modern advertising theory and professional practices.

A prior search for the world’s largest and most historically significant archives and collections of advertisements and marketing ephemera (promotional objects or media executions created for a one-time, limited purpose) revealed a handful of library and museum collections of exceptional size or topical importance meriting further investigation. This paper adds to an extensive line of research published in the marketing and advertising historical literature exploring and describing the breadth, depth and historical value of the world’s important collections of historical advertisements and ephemera.

When advertising historians began searching for substantial collections and archives of historical advertisements and marketing ephemera in the 1970s, some reported such holdings were rare. This paper aims to report the findings of the first systematic attempt to assess the scope and research value of the world’s archives and collections devoted to advertising and marketing ephemera.

Searches conducted online of the holdings of museums, libraries and the internet led to the identification and description of 179 archives and collections of historical significance for historians of marketing and advertising, as well as researchers interested in many other topics and disciplines.

The lists of archives and collections resulting from the research reported in this article represent the most complete collection of such sources available. Identified are the world’s oldest and largest collections of advertising and ephemera. Also identified are quite extraordinary collections of historically unique records and artifacts.

The online searches continued until a point of redundancy was reached and no new archives or collections meeting the search criteria emerged. There remains the likelihood, however, that other archives and collections exist, especially in non-Western countries.

The findings make valuable contributions to the work of historians and other scholars by encouraging more global and cross-cultural research and historical analyses of trends and themes in professional practices in marketing and advertising and their consequences over a longer period than previously studied.

ONE OF the most fallacious arguments in local history librarianship is the suggestion that ‘To start a local collection costs nothing’. It costs staff time, energy, thought, equipment, training, and the materials—book and non‐book—which comprise the collection. Even if items are donated or collected free of charge there is a cost in storing and housing, and it would be naive to think otherwise. And worse, the public—ever ready to make a quick buck—have been saturated with propaganda about ‘antique’ values, and every day that passes makes ‘free’ donations unlikely; it is not enough to appeal to local patriotism any more, and palms have to be crossed with silver (more likely notes—strictly cash!). Beware rapacious postcard salesmen. However, after that bout of cynical—but accurate—perception that everything in librarianship has to be bought and paid for in ratepayers' cash, it is possible to say that most local ephemera can be had for nothing, as distinct from staff, processing and storage costs.

Some virtual, immersive stories are filled with documents that users must locate and interact with to experience a narrative. Exploring a new area of inquiry in the information science field, this study focuses on individuals' experiences with documents in a particular 3D storytelling world.

Using a qualitative approach, this study examined user interactions with virtual documents to better understand the relationship between information behavior and narrative spaces. This study employed observations of users in a story-rich world, followed by semistructured interviews using virtual artifacts and stimulated recall.

Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis, this study found that (1) environmental and personal influences, (2) the search and the narrative experience and (3) expectation and confirmation events surround a user's experiences with documents in storytelling worlds. These influences and experiences determine the user's relationship with these documents, which may be considered narrative ephemera – objects that a user accumulates to create and structure a story. This model of narrative ephemera depicts the user's search for narrative cadence, fulfillment of competence needs and visions of story events or the user's own lived experiences. Individuals may experience these phenomena from a single document, shifting back and forth between the designers' intentions and the users' own realities.

This study represents a first attempt to investigate information behavior in a distributed narrative space: a virtual world filled with documents. This study reveals that commonly employed information behavior theories, as well as literary and motivation theories, may be well suited for investigating story worlds. Continued research in this area of inquiry may benefit educators as well as designers of digital stories.

We argue that change management has become ideological and that by selective use of complexity research has used the imperative for change to further political and economic agendas. We seek to redress this situation by developing a critical perspective on change and a new metaphor, the zone of entanglement, to assist critical analysis of change. Central to our argument is that a dynamic of change is non‐change. In this vein, we show that there are deep, robust and persistent structures that dampen change and which, if recognized, may help in achieving organic change, resulting in positive social transformations.

The traditional library image that comes to mind upon hearing this word is of vertical files filled with newspaper clippings, photos, brochures, flyers on a popular topic or event.

The modern image of ephemera, however, is now more nuanced and complex, as the increased creation of digital ephemera provides opportunities and challenges for libraries and archives.

There now need to be considerations for dealing with digital materials and artifacts that are short-lived and temporary. These digital ephemera are increasing every day, with a presence in the world that is anything but temporary.

The Library of Congress announced that it would be digitally archiving every public tweet since Twitter’s inception in March 2006 (Raymond, 2010). As of 2013, they had archived 170 billion tweets and were receiving nearly a half billion tweets a day (Allen, 2013). However, the magnitude of the project is being grappled with and currently the project appears to be in limbo (Scola, 2015).