Month: September 2025

What is memorabilia?

The Irving Wallace papers were previously organized by call numbers, derived from Classification and Shelflisting Manual or Cutter tables. During the reprocessing to Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), the records were assigned categories rather than call numbers. The categories include audiovisual, correspondence, memorabilia, publicity, research, and writings.

Defining “memorabilia” as a subsection of artifacts and records has been an interesting task with the Irving Wallace papers. The University of Wisconsin-Madison defines memorabilia as “paper-based and two-dimensional” that may include posters, artwork, and programs. While the SAA addressed memorabilia through the definition of “scrapbook” as “clippings, pictures, and photographs.”

The composition of the range of deviations of how “memorabilia” is understood, points again to historical value. A researcher should question, why was this item kept and collected? To the right is Wallace’s copy editor’s pencil made in England from 1982—similar pencils would have been used to mark up the very same manuscripts and galleys in the collection.

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox

Work Cited

Dictionary of Archives Terminology. SAA: Society of American Archivists, 2025. https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/scrapbook.html

“Our Collections: Artifact and Memorabilia Collection.” University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2025. https://www.library.wisc.edu/archives/archives/our-collections-2/artifacts/

Do three-dimensional artifacts add value to an archival collection?

Archives, known for the preservation of two-dimensional paper documents, additionally house three-dimensional artifacts. A cornerstone of special collections is the emphasis of historical value. But how should a collection be contextualized and maintained for the integrity of the historical narrative? From individuals to organizations, collections are acquired in company with items that would not initially be associated with an “archive.”

Yale University delineates three-dimensional primary sources into various subsections of “types and formats” including ephemera, books and pamphlets, and objects and artifacts. Ephemera is defined as a material with “temporary or short-lived use in everyday life,” while objects and artifacts are identified as through functionality and their “intrinsic worth.”

The key is the significance to the creator of the records and the impact on the collection as a whole. What do these three-dimensional objects offer through their iconography and tangibility? For the Irving Wallace papers, delightful examples of three-dimensional artifacts for the book The People’s Almanac include promotional Eat ‘N Read lunch bags with the delectable quote, “Enjoy a hot book with your cold sandwich,” and puzzles with playful illustrations. Whether considered an artifact, ephemera, or an object, three-dimensional materials keep an archival collection from falling flat.

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox

Works Cited

“Primary Sources at Yale: Types and Formats.” Yale University, 2025. https://primarysources.yale.edu/types-formats.

What is a publisher catalog?

A publisher catalog is a systematic record of available books for sale by a publisher from a single page to a pamphlet to an entire book. The objective of publisher catalogs is easily tied to advertising and the impact of literature facilitating change in the publishing industry and popular culture.

From introducing new book editions and book fairs with early trade catalogs in the 17th century to the development of the mail-order catalog industry in the 19th-century to the standardization of books listings in the 20th-century, publisher catalogs have been developed for centuries with the purpose of sharing books.

A publisher catalog recently caught my eye in the Irving Wallace papers. A Bantam Books fall 1979 trade paperback edition catalog is comprised, cover-to-cover, of illustrations and artwork. The illustrations include The Martian Chronicles written by Ray Bradbury and illustrated by Ian Miller, and Urshurak written and illustrated by the Brothers Hildebrandt.

The publisher catalog is an interesting find in an archive providing insight into what books were deemed worthy of print, how publishers promoted materials to readers, and what the public was looking for. In this instance, the publisher catalog becomes noteworthy item in and of itself as an amalgamation of captivating illustrations.

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox

Works Cited

Kosovsky, Bob. “Guide to Music Publishers’ Catalogs: What Is a Music Publisher’s Catalog?” Research Guides. The New York Public Library, January 30, 2023. https://libguides.nypl.org/musicpublisherscatalogs.

Romaine, Lawrence B. A Guide to American Trade Catalogs, 1744–1900. Dover, 1990.

“‘Another almanac?’ you may ask. Not quite. Not really. An almanac, yes, but not the kind that you’ve known all you life or that your ancestors grew up with.” (x)

The People’s Almanac, originally published in 1975, is a compilation of ‘facts and figures’ across time and subject. Whether history, science, technology, health, humanities, or religion, Wallace enumerates noteworthy subjects. The variety of contents include titles such as Unsealing the Time Capsule, Spaced Out, On the Road, All in Sport, and The Unknown and Mysterious.

To highlight the range of ‘facts and figures’ here are excerpts from the book…

1. Clyde Barrow, notoriously part of the duo of Bonnie and Clyde, preferred Fords because of the speed and gas milage.

2. Atlantis, an island continent, written about by Plato in the 4th century B.C., was supposedly destroyed by an earthquake that plunged it beneath the sea.

3. Percy Bysshe Shelley, know for the poems Queen Mab and Prometheus Unbound, was also known as a revolutionary, an atheist, and a vegetarian.

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox