In the mid-twentieth century, Helen Basler gathered the mementos that reminded her of her college days. She selected pressed corsages, registration cards, newspaper clippings, and convocation programs and pasted them in empty scrapbook. Through her scrapbook, we can chart the major developments of Helen’s college years, from her first days at Wittenberg College in 1934 to her graduation in 1940. Her scrapbook, like many other individually curated books, reveal a great deal about the creator but also served to help the creator organize and personal information in a time before Google Drive and OneDrive existed.
Scrapbooks took hold in the nineteenth century with improved printing and papermaking technology. Early scrapbooks were often the family bible, where participants wrote down important dates and placed important papers between its pages (CSUN University Library, 2019). Yet during the nineteenth century, technology made print media widely available. Photography was invented in 1822, and over the years it became increasingly cheaper and easier to produce so that it became available to everyday people. Meanwhile, paper became cheaper as they shifted from used linens to plant matter and adapted paper-making machines (Ott, 2012). With innovations in printing, periodicals became widely available and more specialized (Garvey, 2013, 3). Prayer cards, post cards, and other material similarly rapidly increased in availability (Garvey, 2013, 3). People were confronted with an overwhelming amount of information and needed a means to conserve that information for later (Garvey, 2013, 3). Everyone–men, women, and children–would collect material that interested them and paste them into blank art books. You can see this the scrapbook with two letters from Isaac K. Funk, a Wittenberg University Alumni and co-founder of Funk and Wagnalls Publishing House. Much of the scrapbook consists of stories clipped from newspapers and magazines and then pasted into the book. Many were humorous or moralizing in tone.
Scrapbooks served this practical function well into the twentieth century. As the name suggests, Wittenberg Newspaper Clippings, volumes I, II, and III, contain newspaper clippings on Wittenberg University. These clippings date from around the early twentieth century to the sixties. The contributor to this set numbered the pages and created a brief list at the beginning of each volume. During this period there what are called clipping bureaus, companies that would mail to interested organizations newspaper clippings relevant to them. This allowed the organizations to track their public profile before the days of social media. Even for individuals, scrapbooks allowed them to keep information on their own lives. Helen Basler’s (who would later be called Helen Rankine) scrapbook is an example of this of this function, just as Marshall Bailey’s scrapbook. Marshall Bailey was a student and later a music professor here at Wittenberg University. Through newspaper clippings and programs, we can see the development of Bailey’s music career.
These scrapbooks provided a curated view of the maker’s identity. We see that in Helen Rankine’s scrapbook. Through the inclusion of the material, we see Helen as the college student, and through programs and newspaper clippings, we can see Marshall as the professor. However, these glimpses may not be totally faithful to the subject they referred to. Scrapbooks were often shared with others, so they represented a curated image of the individual, rather than a complete view (Garvey, 2013, 16).
Toward the end of the twentieth scrapbooks lost popularity. Around the late mid-2000s, scrapbooking experienced a resurgence as a hobby (Garvey, 2013, 19). They used stickers, paper, and other material bought from hobby stores or departments to personalize their books, often for the purpose to document their family lineage (Garvey, 2013, 20; Levenson, 2005). The creator of the Education Department scrapbook used such materials. They included photocopies of important documents and stickers. Importantly, creators of scrapbooks used software to edit photos and documents.
Today scrapbooks may not have the same place they did in the nineteenth century, but they have provided an important steppingstone. Consider how the scrapbooks of the past relate to social media today. Although we are long way from saving newspaper clippings in a blank book, we are still saving personal photos on sites like Facebook or Instagram.
References
CSUN University Library (2019, October 22). The history of scrapbooks. Retrieved from The History of Scrapbooks | CSUN University Library
Garvey, E. (2013). Writing with scissors: American scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance. Oxford University Press.
Levenson, E. (2005). Your message to posterity. New Statesman, 134 (4748), 25.
Ott, E. (2012). Turning the page: Technology & innovation in 19th-century books. Retrieved from Turning the Page: Technology & Innovation in 19th-Century Books | Rare Book School