DAVID LILBURNE, President
I started book selling in London as Antipodean Books, Maps & Prints in 1976, and joined the UK Ephemera Society around 1980. Soon after relocating to the U.S., I found the ESA and have felt at home with our fellow paper enthusiasts ever since.
As a past president of the ABAA, and knowing most of the dealers in both the ABAA and the Ephemera Society, I feel I can help the ESA raise its professional standards and visibility.
MICHAEL PEICH, Vice President
A member of the Ephemera Society of America’s Conference Planning sub-committee, I am a baseball fan, historian, and vintage ephemera and card collector. I have written about vintage baseball cards and early 20th century minor league baseball, and gave a talk, 19th Century Baseball Ephemera: Early Marketing of the National Pastime, at Ephemera 35. That talk later appeared in The Ephemera Journal (Volume 17, Number 3).
My personal website is devoted to early 20th century Southern minor league baseball cards. I am currently an Emeritus Professor of English at West Chester University (Pennsylvania) where I founded Aralia Press, a fine printing imprint that issues contemporary poetry. I co-founded the acclaimed West Chester University Poetry Conference, and established the WCU Poetry Center. I live in West Chester, Pennsylvania and am a long-suffering Phillies and Cubs fan.
JOHN G. SAYERS, Treasurer
John is a retired Canadian CPA who has written prolifically about his collection of Ocean Liner ephemera, which he has now donated to The Bodleian Library at Oxford University. John’s recent book, Secrets of the Great Ocean Liners, captures some of the many highlights of his collection. He continues to acquire – and write.
John is now in his eleventh year of service (over many years, not consecutive) on the Board of the Society with a similar length of service on the Council of the British Ephemera Society. A passionate collector, John is also active at the Board level with local collector and historical groups in his retirement town of Niagara-on-the-Lake.
JAMES ARSENAULT
I’ve been a rare book dealer since 1988 and from the beginning ephemera has been part and parcel of my inventory. I’ve been a member of the Ephemera Society since the 1990s and have exhibited at the Society’s annual ephemera fair every year since that time. The wonders and possibilities of ephemera continue to delight and educate me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to serve on the board to help continue to bring the endlessly interesting world of ephemera to as wide an audience as possible.
BETH CARROLL-HORROCKS
My entire career working in manuscripts and special collections repositories has been devoted to preserving things that were not expected to last very long. Besides graduate degrees in history and library science, I have also earned certificates in fundraising management and have almost completed a program in museum studies. I’ve exhibited at Ephemera Society conferences and spoken at one annual meeting on my own ephemera interest: rulers, especially those made of paper.
My other collecting interests include Tucks State Belles postcards and pincushion postcards. I am most interested in continuing the Ephemera Society of America’s practice of excellent-quality conferences, and in encouraging a new generation of collectors to appreciate ephemera.
LORNA CONDON
I have been a member of the Ephemera Society of America for many years and previously served two terms on its board of directors. As Senior Curator of Library and Archives at Historic New England, I have had the opportunity to significantly expand our collection of ephemera related to everyday life in the New England region. In order to share this collection with the public and to raise awareness of it, I have published articles, curated exhibitions, lectured, and given numerous tours. I believe the Ephemera Society has a vital role in disseminating information about the value and importance of ephemera, and I look forward to contributing my knowledge and expertise to help.
THOMAS HORROCKS
I am a historian and a retired librarian and hold a Ph.D. in history and a graduate degree in library science. Having served in library management for twenty-five years, I recently worked for the past six years as a full-time consultant for Heritage Auctions, specializing in political Americana, rare books, and manuscripts.
I have authored, edited, and co-edited seven books, including Lincoln’s Campaign Biographies (2014), President James Buchanan: A Crise of National Leadership (2011), and The Annotated Lincoln (2014). A long-time member of the Ephemera Society of America, I am a life-long collector. I collect pre-1900 presidential campaign biographies and Abraham Lincoln material, including ephemera.
BARBARA LOE
I am a retired regional sales manager from 3M and as part of my position there I organized a large number of meetings and conferences, so when I first started working with the board the conference position seemed like a natural fit.
I’ve been a collector and dealer since the 1990s and have served as the ESA conference chair for the last 12 years. I served as a board member for two terms starting in 2008. We’ve focused on expanding the conference to more presentations around a specific theme each year and have worked to expand our presenters to include authors, academics, and topic specialists. In the last couple of years, we’ve added virtual conferences with accompanying virtual fairs to give our members more value and to provide activities throughout the year. I want to focus on more ways to bring new and younger members to our organization.
MARI NAKAHARA
I am a curator and librarian, and hold a Ph.D. in architectural history and design, and a graduate degree in library and information science. My enthusiasm to learn about archives led me to intern at Columbia University’s Avery Architectural Archive as well as the Museum of Modern Art in the 1990s. Then, I finally emigrated to the U.S. from Japan in 2000.
I have worked on various types of collections at multiple institutions, such as the New York Public Library, the Skyscraper Museum, the Octagon Museum, and the Library of Congress. I hope my experience for the last few decades would contribute to the Society’s needs.
ERIKA PIOLA
As Curator of Graphic Arts and Director of the Visual Culture Program at the Library Company of Philadelphia, I have had the pleasure to acquire, research, catalog, make presentations, and write about ephemera in the Library’s collection for over twenty years. Within the last decade, my enthusiasm for these “transient documents of everyday life” grew even more through my management of the digital project 18th-and 19th-Century Ephemera, my co-curation of the exhibition Remnants of Everyday Life: Ephemera in the Workplace, Street, and Home, and my collaboration with the Ephemera Society of America in organizing the conference Unmediated History: The Scholarly Study of 19th-Century Ephemera.
As an Ephemera Society Board member, I hope to further spread the word about the work of the Society and advocate for the import and insightful joy of ephemera, sometimes small in size but always expansive in meaning.
ELIZABETH WATTS POPE
Ephemera from the book trades are my primary interest, including booksellers’ labels, binders’ tickets, bookplates, prospectuses, publishers’ catalogs, “how to canvass” instructions, etc. As Curator of Books and Digitized Collections at the American Antiquarian Society (where I have been since 2004), I am also responsible for the library’s hundreds of thousands of pamphlets. Many are the only surviving copy of these ephemeral publications. This is what in excites me most about all forms of ephemera – they often provide information about the everyday lives of ordinary people that doesn’t exist elsewhere.
JEREMY ROWE
Dr. Jeremy Rowe has collected, researched, and written about 19th and early 20th century photographs for over forty years, including Arizona Photographers 1850 – 1920: A History and Directory, Arizona Real Photo Postcards: A History and Portfolio, and Arizona Stereographs 1865 – 1930, and numerous publications on photographic history. He serves on boards of the Daguerreian Society, The Ephemera Society of America, Daniel Nagrin Theatre Film & Dance Foundation Inc., and the National Stereoscopic Association.
He was a Fulbright Specialist at the National Museum of Bosnia Herzegovina and works with the Library of Congress on projects including the Nagrin and National Stereoscopic Research Collections and research Fellowships.
Jeremy is an Emeritus Faculty member at Arizona State University and Senior Research Scientist at New York University.
ELIZABETH SVENDSEN
I am an antiquarian book dealer with an academic background in nineteenth-century American social and cultural history. The scope of my interest in ephemera grows with each passing year (the more I learn, the more there is to appreciate), but I am particularly fond of the ephemera of places — travel brochures, real estate promotional materials, souvenir view books, and the like — and materials related to American religious movements, popular entertainment, health crazes, and cons and frauds.
I am excited to be able to help the organization grow and spread our passion for these fascinating tidbits of the past to an ever-widening audience.
MATTHEW WITTMAN
Through my work as a curator and historian of popular entertainment, I have dealt with a wide range of ephemera, ranging from postcards and playbills to banknotes. In the context of my position as Curator of the Harvard Theatre Collection, I am actively involved in the cataloging and collecting of theatrical ephemera. I have written two books on the history of the American circus and contributed essays on a printing history, numismatics, and theater history to a number of different publications. I curated an exhibition this fall at Houghton Library about immigration and the American stage that is comprised almost exclusively of ephemera, some of which has been acquired at ESA fairs of recent years. With this background in writing and thinking about ephemera, I know that I can contribute to the growth and development of the ESA as the organization looks to its future.
https://library.harvard.edu/collections/harvard-theatre-collection
MARY BETH MALMSHEIMER
Administrative Director
As the Administrative Director of our Society, Mary Beth manages the day-to-day activities of running the organization. She handles membership, publication design, layout and distribution, member inquiries and assistance, annual conference and fair details, as well as numerous other responsibilities.
If you have any questions or require assistance, she can be reached at: info@ephemerasociety.org
DIANE DeBLOIS
Editor, The Ephemera Journal
Diane is one of the Society’s founding members, and has attended every fair and conference.
She has created articles and talks nationally and internationally, and designed symposia in partnership with the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collection Librarians, the Rare Book and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Strong Museum of Play, the American Antiquarian Society, the Clements Library, Winterthur Library and Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, The Library Company of Philadelphia. She and partner Robert Dalton Harris, under the name aGatherin’, specialize in researching and selling ephemera, with a specialty in the history of communication. aGatherin’ has appraised large archives for The Library of Congress, New York State Library, Fashion Institute of Technology, Smithsonian National Postal Museum and others. They were jointly awarded our Maurice Rickards Award in 2008, and received the American Philatelic Society’s Luff Award for excellence in philatelic research in 2016.
Diane collects electric toasters and related ephemera. She is especially attracted by the manuscript record of everyday life.