#Ephemera and #ColorOurCollections
The Collections team is taking part in two social media events in this month of February.
Published on 2nd February 2018
A month-long Twitter campaign has been initiated by the Natural History Museum Library and Archives to raise awareness of the importance of ephemera in natural history collections. Throughout February, we're joining in with @NHM_Library to tweet a piece of #ephemera from our collection.
There will be some intriguing items, like this undated (probably eighteenth-century) advert tweeted on 2 February. It invites Ladies and Gentlemen (for the price of 6d) as well as Tradesmen, Servants and Children (for 3d) to come and see a 'Mermaid, Angel Fish or Sea Woman! from Bengal'.
There will be newspapers clippings, leaflets, telegrams, postcards, posters, and all sorts of other material that are not normally preserved, but if kept enrich the history of the Linnean Society, and highlight its links with other institutions. So look out for our daily tweets!
In addition, we are taking part in #ColorOurCollections, organised by the New York Academy of Medicine every year. We selected 5 black and white illustrations for people to colour in – this campaign starts next week and many institutions are participating: http://library.nyam.org/colorourcollections/ The five images selected by the Linnean Society will be available to download from the New York Academy of Medicine website, along with many other collections from other participating institutions.
Isabelle Charmantier, Deputy Collections Manager