We see them all the time: posters, flyers, pamphlets, catalogs. But how much notice do we take? Often, they only require a few moments attention, and yet so much about a time and place is communicated. And unlike our tradition conception of the mass media and press, the production of these forms of printed communication has been quite accessible to a broad range of people.
The Library of Congress has over 10,000 items from its Printed Ephemera collection on-line at An American Time Capsule; Three Centuries of Broadsides and Printed Ephemera. …