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Describes how the pamphlet collection at the University of Toledo’s Carlson Library is built and maintained, centering on the Pamphlet Collection Manual, which was specifically written for the collection. Discusses the collection’s mission, arrangement, OPAC access, circulation, selection, ordering, online cataloging, processing, weeding and record keeping as detailed in the manual. Provides a review of the literature since 1970 on academic library pamphlet collections.

Pamphlets are widely used by health authorities to inform the public about diseases, and it is essential that the information therein is accurate. This study reviewed the consistency of information on breast cancer screening in materials produced and distributed by Australian health authorities. The study found that there was a clear lack of consensus in terms of the stated lifetime risk of breast cancer; while most agreed that being a woman and increasing age were the major risk factors, there was far less agreement about other risk factors, and the specific representation of symptoms was one of the areas of greatest inconsistency. It appears that this lack of consensus is not unique to Australia, but exists in other countries. Material produced by health authorities is seen by the general public as “expert” opinion, and should be able to correct inaccurate perceptions generated by exposure to other sources. There is a need to develop and disseminate messages that provide women with an accurate understanding of breast cancer and breast cancer screening.

Call it a vertical file, an information file, a pamphlet file, or give it any one of a number of more creative titles. Regardless of its name, this file is likely to be the place in your library that will offer the best and most workable storage for what are commonly called “ephemeral materials.” Such materials include pamphlets, documents, clippings or photocopies from newspapers or magazines, newsletters, annual reports, flyers, maps, charts, pictures, posters, or occasional sample periodicals, any or all of which may be relevant to your library's collection.

This paper aims to investigate three promotional publications produced by the Postum Cereal Company – A Trip Through Postumville (1920), How I Make Postum (1924) and The Wonderful Lunch Boxes (1925) – with the aim of understanding how language and other semiotic resources are used to promote its products as good and healthy choices.

The three publications were collected from the HathiTrust Digital Library and University of South Florida Tampa Special Collections. They were subjected to multimodal critical discourse analysis to tease out their subtle characteristics and how a combination of language, image, colour, typography and composition are used to represent certain ideas and values related to health and well-being.

The publications subscribe to three distinct genres – “inside the factory”, “friendly spokesperson” and “fictional world” – each of which are aimed at different target audiences. The first seeks to promote Postum as an open and transparent company; the second to promote Postum as a company that cares about its consumers; and the third to promote the health benefits of Postum in a fun and accessible manner. Nonetheless, they are united in their overall objective to link the regular consumption of Postum as essential for good health.

To date, few studies have been conducted on the Postum Cereal Company, while the limited research conducted on promotional publications has tended to overlook discourses of health and well-being. The three genres outlined in this study, thus, have the potential to foster a reappraisal of promotional publications and showcase their ability to offer new understandings on historical approaches to marketing, particularly the link with health and science.

“Pamphlet material has some definite functions in college libraries and therefore should be accorded more consideration than it usually receives. Often librarians give this part of the collection very little thought, sometimes because of lack of time, but more often because they are not interested in such material and they fail to see the values of it.”

Definition of a pamphlet depends upon defining a book as a book that will stand up on the shelves and a periodical as something which comes out periodically: anything else is a pamphlet. There are librarians who recognize such things as serials, reports and a multitude of other sub‐divisions in order to make life simpler or harder. But for the purpose of this paper a pamphlet is taken to be any literature which does not fall into the category of book or periodical.

IN the meridian of the year the librarian, like other people, turns his back upon his work, and with gleeful heart hies him away to sea or mountain side, there to forget for a brief season book and pen and general public, and all the worries which vex the soul of the servant of these three mighty taskmasters. A little before the happy time of freedom a sudden and deep disgust for his work and everything connected with it will seize upon his soul. He feels the need of a wider horizon than that of five by three—the catalogue card. The neatness and order of his classified shelves in which he was wont to take such delight and pride appear to him now but a vanity and a vexation of the spirit. Oh, for something unclassified, like nature, where rock and tree and water and air and sky are not parcelled out and separated one from another, in the trivial sortage of the laboratory or shop, but all are piled together in grand and sharp confusion, or subtly blended in exquisite harmonies which defy the namer and confound the analyst. Then do the days drag slowly along until the curtain of the roll‐top desk is finally shut down, and the wearied labourer goes forth—free.

In this paper an attempt is made to calculate the cost of equipment and staff for an industrial technical library, with a view to providing in accessible, tabulated form data which might be useful in planning new libraries, or organizing those already established. The detailed tables are set out at the end of the text, and are clearly cross‐referenced.

In the disaster mitigation community, one of the most important tasks is that of information transfer prior to, and following natural disasters. The purpose of this research project was to increase the understanding of key aspects (such as attractiveness and educational value) that influence the utility and effectiveness of educational media tools for home resilience during hurricanes.

A total of three types of educational media were developed – pulp board coasters, tri‐fold pamphlets, and a web hosted video. The contents of these media were developed based on data from federal agencies, as well as scholarly articles and technical reports to form an inclusive body of information. Several focus groups of homeowners and potential homeowners were held to evaluate participant's preference of these three media tools with regards to their usefulness for making homes safer during natural disasters, specifically during wind and wind‐driven rain events (e.g. hurricanes).

Analysis of the focus groups indicate that media use (based on disaster prevention home resilience practices) is highly dependent on the target audience or the stakeholder group (e.g. consumers look for different information content as compared to the builders). While all three media were indicated by the participants to have merit, the pamphlet was preferred aesthetically and was most likely to be used by homeowners. In addition, the study found that the usefulness of the tools depends on the ease of understanding and implementation of the best practices and ease of access to the tools (targeted location for each media).

The findings of the study have implications for the entire disaster educational community. Although the findings are mostly qualitative and the small sample used in the focus groups limits the generalize ability to the entire population of the USA, nevertheless, future educational information and tools used should follow easy to understand language, be illustrated with examples and pictures, and be placed at convenient locations for homeowners to access.

By understanding how to better reach homeowners with information on home resilience, information can be more effectively disseminated to the public which allows for efficient use of tools as well as funds.

Copyright is integral to everything we do in digital publishing. This new column will examine a wide range of intellectual property issues using concrete examples from current projects. Since Internet‐based publishing is automatically international, the column will look at the British, European and other aspects, as well as US law. This first column deals with the question of whether a set of 1960s era Black Panther Party pamphlets are in the public domain under US copyright law. It also mentions the moral rights issues that would arise in a German context. The final section of the column reviews some of the information sources useful in answering questions of this sort.