Postcards in the Library: Invaluable Visual Resources

For once, a seemingly rather hyperbolic sub‐title actually gets it right: as a class of visual ephemera, postcards can indeed be an invaluable documentary resource. Their interest can be frequently direct, such as for local history, or indirect, as examples of social history, costume and the like. Countless postcards have been printed over the years and many have probably been lost forever. But many also survive in various collections: postcard collecting is flourishing as a private hobby and now increasing numbers of preserved archival collections are being established, many of them in libraries. I am not aware of too many...