Scrapbooks: Intrinsic Value and Material Culture

ABSTRACT

Scrapbooks present a particularly challenging set of preservation issues to archivists. However, as an intriguing combination of diaries, photograph albums, and ephemera, their format and arrangement are an essential part of their usefulness as sources to researchers. The fascinating link between scrapbooks and quilts, evident in a brief history of scrapbooks and an exploration of several types, indicates that scrapbooks are a particularly rich source for researchers interested in women's history. In order to facilitate the richest understanding of these unique and fascinating sources, material literacy should be increased among both archivists and researchers. In particular, archivists should understand the important function these records have to researchers, and how their storage and preservation choices affect that function.     

International developments: Educational and informational needs of public library users in Nigeria

The purpose of this paper is to examine the educational and informational needs of public library users in Nigeria. The data was obtained from the answers to an inquiry form handed to persons entering the library during a typical six days of operation in seven public libraries in Nigeria. It was discovered that a large number of users used the library as “study hall” (69.1 percent) and seek library materials for their school work (72.3 percent). It is recommended that public libraries should gear their collections to the needs of the people. Focused collection rather than balanced collection is recommended. Normal library functions should be expanded to include education, literacy, and health care.     

The Library Director as Change Agent

No abstract available for this article.     

Digital Broadsides

This article explores the ‘ontological rift’ between the digital and the material archive of political broadside ballads. It outlines the ways in which the ballad’s original diversity has been eroded and homogenised by multiple processes of remediation, including digitisation over time, and investigates the limitations of digitisation projects in delivering the multifarious and widely scattered broadside ballad archive online. Finally, it considers how far digitisation projects have unintentionally ‘concretised’ not only older interpretive practices in relation to the ballad as genre, but also outdated narratives regarding the ballad’s place in the news networks and political culture of seventeenth-century England.