What information can a CD-R, a newspaper clipping, and a business card tell us about a museum? When they are all part of an accession file, they can give us important clues about the history of objects in a collection.
In summer 2026, the National Building Museum underwent a comprehensive audit of its accession files. These files compile all available information about a donation or transfer of objects into the collection, and, because the Museum has over 600,000 objects in its collection, there are many accession files to keep track of.
For the most part, these files are filled with an unsurprising array of legal documents: donation contracts, loan agreements, correspondence with donors, and the like. However, there were also some more surprising finds within these files, with some containing supplementary materials called ephemera.
Ephemera is a difficult word to define, and a difficult subject to tackle. In the broader archival sense, ephemera tend to take the form of informational documents designed to be thrown away after use, or that are only useful for a short amount of time. They could be business cards, brochures, exhibition programs, or receipts. All these documents are traditionally meant to be disposed of once their initial purpose has been served, and therefore are not designed with longevity in mind. Their existence is ephemeral, hence the name: ephemera.
In the context of the Museum’s accession files, ephemera refers to any material that arrived as part of a donation that is not the actual donation itself, but still provides context and information about the objects. For example, in 2018 the Museum received a large donation of souvenir buildings from a private collection. Alongside the buildings themselves, the donation included supplementary material, such as newspaper articles and reviews of prior exhibitions of the collection. This is a more traditional example of ephemera.
However, the Museum’s accession files also include some items that don’t necessarily have as short a shelf life as more traditional ephemera. One such example is a donation from the Washington National Cathedral, which came with an accompanying CD-R disc containing photos of the donated objects. This CD-R may not have been destined for the “wastebin,” as ephemera collector Maurice Rickards once said, but its existence as supplemental material to the donation makes it ephemera for the Museum’s purposes (Burant, 1995, p. 190).
Archivists have differing views as to how best to handle ephemera, and these differences in opinion have a lot to do with the many environments in which these ephemera can be found. Working with these pieces in a museum is very different than, say, a government records office, a historical society, or an academic or public library.
Archivists tend to agree that, while these items may not be the “central” part of a collection or archive, they are still important archivally and should be stored in a way that prevents deterioration. Additionally, if these items take the form of physical media, like CD-R discs, they should be digitized so the information can be accessed without having to use the media itself. Because of this collections philosophy, the Museum has begun a project to rehouse ephemera in Collections Storage, where they will be safe from further deterioration. This project will also involve digitizing physical media items for safekeeping and preservation.
As with any archival undertaking, this will be an ongoing process. It will involve rehousing individual pieces — some accession files have dozens of pieces that need to be preserved — before moving them into storage. The diversity among these pieces is significant. Some files contain small documents in great condition; some contain CD-Rs that haven’t been played in decades; some contain photographs that have already deteriorated in quality due to air and light exposure.
The first step of this process, then, is to assess which items are most and least in need of immediate attention. If a piece of paper is falling apart in an archivist’s hands, its preservation would be of highest priority. If, instead, the document is a business card from three years ago with no visible wear and tear, it would be of the lowest priority. All physical media defaults to being at least medium priority, because discs and tapes have a much shorter shelf life than paper due to their physical and chemical makeup.
This project will also involve the introduction of a new cataloguing and tracking system so these objects can be found in the future. An effective classification and tracking system for ephemera is also a way of future-proofing the collection — that is, preventing issues down the line by anticipating and solving those issues now — by allowing the addition of more materials as the Museum makes future acquisitions.
Every institution is different, and so it can be difficult to find one process that works for everyone when needs vary, even among museums themselves. What works for one museum might not be the right choice for another. Archivists have many options when deciding how to handle these projects, and ideas about the best and most effective methods can and will change.
That’s why projects like this accession audit are so important. It provides the Museum a better idea of what documentation it does and doesn’t have, but it also serves as a reminder for museums and archives in general that it is important to routinely review a collection and its policies. Doing so can reveal additional steps that could increase the organization, efficiency, and longevity of the archive – and ensure that even the smallest pieces of history are not lost.
Citations:
Burant, J. (1995). Ephemera, Archives, and Another View of History. Archivaria, 40, 189–198.
Retrieved from https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/1210559
This post was written by Madeleine (Madi) Donat, a Summer 2026 National Building Museum collections intern and second-year graduate student at McGill University’s School of Information Studies with a concentration in Archives & Preservation Management. She is passionate about preserving social histories through archival work and assisting museums and cultural institutions with technological transitions. When she is not renaming digital files or digitizing ephemera, she can probably be found writing, playing logic games, or hanging out with her cat.
To learn more about internships at the National Building Museum, click here.