Indexes by theme

This is a list of the broad headings of the John Johnson Collection with links to their indexes in PDF format (where available).

To check whether the heading(s) which interest you have been catalogued and/or digitised, consult the list of catalogued and digitised sections.

Entertainment

The Entertainment section is divided into theatres, arranged chronologically within venue, and other forms of entertainment, arranged by genre.

Most of our theatre material was catalogued for the Backstage Project. This resource is no longer online, but our records are available through our online catalogue. We subsequently digitised all our 18th century Entertainment material for an Oxford Digital Library Project 18th century Entertainment Ephemera, now available on Digital Bodleian.

We have recently completed cataloguing and digitising our 19th century Entertainment ephemera for the JISC-funded ProQuest project.

Form

Although most of the John Johnson Collection is arranged by subject, several sections contain various forms or genres of ephemera. These are listed below. There is, of course, significant overlap between subject and form. Labels, for example, are arranged by the products they were created for, which in turn are represented in the Advertising sections.

Conversely we assign genre terms to everything we catalogue, using a variety of thesauri.

Printing Processes

As Printer to the University, John Johnson aimed to document printing as well as social history through his collection. There are several sections devoted to printers and printing techniques.

Except for a very few manuscript items, the entire collection represents the products of printing presses, of engraving, of letterpress and lithography; and a multitude of 20th century photomechanical processes. Through the online catalogue, we have indexed printers, lithographers, engravers, etc. and have identified the printing processes of most items.

Prints

Many of the prints in the John Johnson Collection have been catalogued and digitised. Political Cartoons and Trades and Professions and some Fashion prints (notably cartoons) are available through the John Johnson online catalogue and through VADS, where they are cross-searchable with other collections.

The Trade in Prints and Scraps (popular prints), the Trade in Cheap Mezzotints and Lithographs, Scraps, Puzzle Pictures and Window Pictures and Transparencies have all been catalogued and digitised. The images are available through the ProQuest resource: The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera.

Private Presses

This section is properly Private Presses and Publishers. It includes a range of ephemera from early printers as well as the output of private presses, many of whose printers Johnson knew personally. Private printing is an area in which Johnson (who mostly collected retrospectively) collected contemporary material. Books have been removed from these boxes to the Johnson Books sequence, so that they are searchable through the University’s online library catalogue, SOLO.  A list of these books will be posted here.

 Many presses contain very little material, housed in slim folders. Others, such as Curwen and the Pear Tree Press, are large sections, taking up several boxes.

Sports

Topographical

Few sections of the collection are devoted to a geographical area or city. Several are sub-sorted by place, for example: Booktrade; Educational; Noteheadings; Seaside, Lakes and Spas; Theatre, Provincial. The collection is rich in provincial as well as London ephemera and is a good resource for local history. Places are indexed both by venue (where applicable) and town (e.g. Theatre Royal, Newcastle upon Tyne and Newcastle upon Tyne, Theatre Royal). Please note that work remains to be done on standardising the names of towns in the place index.

Transport

The first digital project of the Bodleian Library, the Toyota Project (now archived), focussed on the Motor Car section of the collection. All motoring ephemera was catalogued at a page level. It also includes 1,000 sample images from the other Transport sections, detailed indexes of which were created at the same time.

Motoring in Britain, 1895–1940 by Julie Anne Lambert and Nick Baldwin was published by Toyota City in association with the Bodleian Library, with text in both English and Japanese. The Bodleian Library’s copy is at M99.L00055. There is also a copy in the Japanese Library. In 2010, there was a small display of London Transport posters.

Travel and Holidays

The Travel and Holidays section of the Collection covers Exploration, the Grand Tour and Travel Agencies as well as Guides in various formats. There is much overlap with the Transport section, notably Railways (Excursion bills etc), Shipping Lines and Cunard Lines.