The tradition or art of scrapbooking emerges from an inherent desire for individuals to leave a legacy. Tangible, but highly visual in nature, a scrapbook is a careful curation of images, clippings, and other ephemera that tells a story of someone’s life at a particular moment in time. Unlike a diary or journal, which are much more intimate and introspective, a scrapbook can be personal, but there is also a performative element of display, or presentation in the way each page is organized. Scrapbooks are curated with an audience in mind.
Yearbook Flip: High School Humour
One of the many things that makes old high school yearbooks such vibrant, lively archival materials is the humour found within their pages. Our yearbook collection dates back to 1913, and even the earliest yearbooks, which read more like student newspapers, have sprinklings of inside jokes, light quips, and satire. It is an encouraging reminder that the youthful spirit of teenagers spans across generations.
Object Legacies: Slave Memoir
arefully wrapped in acid-free paper and stored inconspicuously among other artifacts of its kind, is an 1856 edition copy of Solomon Northup’s memoir, 12 Years A Slave. It is part of the Museum’s Rare Book Collection. Materially, this artifact is catalogued with the following description…
Yearbook Flip: High School History Lesson
The St. Catharines Museum currently has 259 yearbooks catalogued in its archival collection. The yearbooks span the years 1913 to […]
A Day in Collections – Archives
These past few weeks have been very busy for Snowflake and Sven, with the First Fridays Ugly Christmas Sweater Party […]