A tally of votes from a bitter and contested election. A program featuring a record-setting LSU basketball icon. An advertisement for an elaborate 19th-century pyrotechnic display. What could this seemingly random group of objects possibly have in common? The answer is that they are all known as ephemera: materials designed to be short-lived and discarded.

LSU Libraries’ new exhibition, “Eclectic Ephemera in Special Collections,” showing in Hill Memorial Library from March 5 through August 29, 2025, offers a wide-ranging selection of economic, educational, military, political, social, and recreational materials from decades past.

In the context of archives, the word “ephemera” refers to materials created for a particular time and place, intended to be of value only for a short period. Because they were first made for limited use, the material used for production—in our case, paper—is cheap and fragile. Ironically, many archives and special collections libraries hold a vast array of ephemera, spanning decades, among their historical holdings. 

While originally meant to be fleeting, seen collectively, ephemera offer unique perspectives on the times in which they were produced and the people who created them. Often graphically appealing, these items can provide significant information that may not be available elsewhere in the historical record.

As “digital ephemera” proliferates at a quickening pace in our own daily lives, it seems especially appropriate to take a moment to appreciate its ancestral, and ironically more enduring, form. The paper tickets to sporting events, political campaign advertisements, and restaurant menus found in archival collections not only provide a dose of nostalgia; they remind us that we have a lot more in common with our forebears than we may realize.