The more I search, the more I find.

It may not be new news to many of you… but to me it is.  A large number of our Colleges and University Libraries are putting together “Digital Libraries” and within those libraries they often have “Digital Collections”.

The one I ran across most recently is at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.  Today’s find was their “Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 – 1920″

This collection presents over 9,000 images, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. The materials, drawn from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, provide a significant and informative perspective on the early evolution of this most ubiquitous feature of modern American business and culture.

The collection was funded by the Library of Congress and Ameritech and has enabled them to make rare advertising history resources available via the World Wide Web.

The images illustrate the rise of consumer culture, especially after the American Civil War, and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States and are drawn from over a dozen separate collections within the Library.

If you have an eye for interesting, and rare advertising items this may well be the place for you to peruse.  It’s perhaps the first broad, web-based collection of related documents – as the ads cover the period from 1911 to 1955.

Take a moment and jump over to the Emergence of Advertising in America collection.  And while you are there, have a look at some of their other interesting digital collections…. maybe their Ration Coupons on the Home Front, 1942-1945 collection?

I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom
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