Portfolio / Library Ephemera

Romance & Realism

James Berkley, 1961

Science & Liberal Education

H. Bentley Glass, 1959

Little Red Riding Hood

1948

Port Royal

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, 1953

The Vikings

Uppsala, 1978

Plays of the Year, 1950

John C. Trewin, 1951

Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Norman T. Carrington, 1966

Las Tres Españas de la España Contemporanea

Vicente Cacho Viu, 1962

Milton Papers

David Harrison Stevens, 1927

Selected Works

Author Unknown

The Public Record Office

Charles Johnson, 1918

Louis XV; the monarchy in decline

G. P. Gooch, 1956

The Principal Speeches of the Statesmen & Orators of the French Revolution

Henry Morse Stephens, 1892

The Poetical Works of Lord Houghton

Richard Monckton Milnes, 1876

Vices & Virtues

Ferdinand Holthausen, 1888

Archives & Manuscripts: Appraisal & Accessioning

Maynard J. Brichford, 1977

Dickens's Dictionary of Days

Charles Dickens, Jr., 1880

A Yachting Cruise to Norway

1895

Schatten des Dkunklen Ostens

Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski, 1924

The Pageant of Netherlands History

Adriaan J. Barnouw, 1952

Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Classical Background & Critical Reception of his Work

Professor Todd K. Bender, 1966

On An Irish Jaunting-Car through Donegal and Connemara

Samuel G. Bayne, 1902

Histoire de France

Jules Michelet; Claude Mettra, 1965-67

The two ocean war: a short history of the United States Navy in the Second World War

Samuel Eliot Morison, 1963

Irish Landscape

R. Lloyd Praeger, 1953

An Etiquette for Writers

Jean Stafford, 1952

Histoire de Belgique

Henri Pirenne, 19--

An Essay on Idealization in Poetry II William Cowper

A. W. Brink, 1973

Lewis Carroll

Derek Hudson, 1954

Milton

Walter Raleigh, 1913

The Middle English stanzaic versions of the life of Saint Anne

Roscoe E. Parker, 1928

Selections from Seventeenth-Century Songbooks

Jenifer W. Angel, 1954

The Resurrection of our Lord

Edited by J. D. Wilson and B. Dobell, 1912

Burglars in Bucks

G. D. H. & M. Cole, 1930

The Spirit of Ireland

Lynn Doyle, 1946

The significance of Congreve's Incognita

Helga Drougge, 1976

Life of Charlemagne

Einhard; S. E. Turner, 1880

The fortunes of war: four great battles of World War II

Rooney et al, 1962

The Original Manuscript of Thomas Hardy's 'The Trumpet Major'

W. G. Bebbington, 1949

The complete works of William Hazlitt

P. P. Howe, 1930

Forty plus and fancy free

Emily Kimbrough, 1954

The history of the holy grail: Englisht, ab. 1450 A. D.

Henry Lovelich, 1905

Collected Works

Daniel Defoe, 1907

Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin, Rome

Keats-Shelley Memorial Association, 1979

Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies

Warburg Institute, 1950

Agnès Sorel, 'la dame de beaulté'

Robert Duquesne, 1909

From the Land of the Midnight Sun to the Volga

Francis C. Sessions, 1890

La France au douzième siècle pendant les règnes de Louis le Gros et de Louis le Jeune

Just-Jean-Etienne Roy, 1884

A Critical Commentary on Milton's 'Samson Agonistes'

Alan Rudrum, 1969

Ideas in Context

Joseph Henry Satin, 1958

Theology and Poetry in the Middle English Lyric

Sarah Appleton Weber, 1969

The Unpublished and Uncollected Poems of William Cowper

William Cowper; Thomas Wright, 1900

About This Series: Library Ephemera

My obsession with the library started at an early age, when my family would make weekly trips to the local public branch. Fast forward to 2014 when I was a grad student at CU... browsing the stacks at Norlin, I came across a book containing remnants of a bygone era: a computer punch card, a slip to sign, ex libris, torn and taped edges. I became obsessed with finding other instances of these material traces, and over a three-week period spent all of my free time searching the stacks and scanning my favorites.


Traces of the Past
“My first library job was in second grade, when for some reason I was allowed to skip parts of my classes to go work in the school library. I got to read a lot, but my main job was stamping the due date on the cards in the back of the books. I loved doing that — so much that my mother took me to the office supply store to buy my own date stamp. I taped circulation cards in the back of my books and stamped them when I took them off the shelf to re-read.”

– Mike Furlough, Assistant Dean for Scholarly Communications, Penn State

Library technology has changed drastically over the past few decades. From circulation cards (first signed in pencil, later stamped) to computer punch-cards to bar codes, tracking methods have become increasingly automated and anonymous. Traces of temporary ownership have fallen aside as technology advances. While efficient, these newer methods leave few, if any, clues to the past (who borrowed, when, for how long etc.). The newer books, never marred by circulation cards, ex libris labels or signatures, maintain a rather pristine condition. In terms of ongoing preservation, one could argue that an unobtrusive bar code is the best solution. Yet, there’s something magical about all of the marks, inserts and stamps that adorn the interior covers of old library books.