John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera
The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera is one of the largest and most important collections of printed ephemera in the world. It offers a fresh view of British history through primary, uninterpreted printed documents which, produced for short-term use, have survived by chance, including advertisements, handbills, playbills and programmes, menus, greetings cards, posters, postcards.
The Collection is strongest in the 18th to early 20th centuries but also contains earlier material. Physically arranged in some 700 subject headings, it is searchable in myriad ways through detailed cataloguing, selective OCR and digitisation.
The John Johnson Collection is one of the Special Collections of the Bodleian Library and is consulted in the Weston Library.