This guide is intended for students/researchers studying Local History at the University of Oxford and elsewhere, although students/researchers from any field may find it useful.
Use this guide to find out how to find ephemera in the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera relating to London and a wide range of cities and towns in Britain, including trade cards, advertisements, circulating library labels and playbills
(C) John Johnson Collection: Trade Cards 21 (110)
Advertisements, catalogues, bill headings, handbills or flyers, playbills, trade cards, headed notepaper.... all these ephemera disappear so rapidly, taking with them tiny insights into social and commercial history.
The John Johnson Collection contains a wealth of such material. Furthermore, a large proportion of ephemera of interest to local historians is catalogued (providing access by place) and digitised, providing information about your town which it might be difficult to find elsewhere - who was trading in a particular street, what their premises looked like 150 years ago.... Ephemera don't contain the whole story, but provide bits of the puzzle that is local history.
Searchability by place is improving all the time. Our Zegami project enables you to search and filter our trade cards by town, address, tradesman, trade, products, printer.... And it does this visually, with geomapping. It's a wonderful new resource. Zegami is fairly intuitive to use, but if you would like a little help, we have a short guide for users.
Trade Cards 28 (26)
(C) John Johnson Collection: Trade Cards 14 (30)
The John Johnson Collection is a great resource for the local historian, wherever you live in Britain.
Unlike many of the collections in London institutions, the John Johnson Collection is strong not only in London but also in provincial ephemera, and includes Irish, Scottish and Welsh material.
The aim of this guide is to outline what types of ephemera you might expect to find and how to access them.
Please bear in mind that by no means all our material is catalogued. Where it is, we have recorded not only towns but addresses, for tradesmen, printers, publishers, venues, etc.
The Collection also includes many views, and these too are indexed by place.
When safe to do so, we are planning to launch a project to collect ephemera across Oxford, four times a year in well-defined streets/areas, so that our present ephemera are not lost to the future. Could you help? If so, please contact us.
John Johnson Collection website: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/johnson
Online catalogue: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/johnson/search/catalogue
The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera (ProQuest). A major digital project of five sections of the Collection: Advertising, 19th century Entertainment, Crime, Popular Prints and Booktrade. Available to all in UK free of charge: http://johnjohnson.chadwyck.co.uk/geoLocSubscription.do
Zegami: interactive trade cards project with GeoMapping.
Indexes: Finding aids to the headings in the collection, arranged alphabetically and by overall theme: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/johnson/search/indexes
JJ Coll LibGuides landing page (with links to guides): http://ox.libguides.com/jj
