Schlesinger Library’s scrapbook collection offers scholars insights into hidden stories, texture of everyday life in bygone eras
It might come as a surprise that scrapbooks — mundane, somewhat old-school arrangements of photographs, newspaper clippings, greeting cards, and other ephemera — are worth archiving. But the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library houses more than 600 of them among its collections. Scrapbooks can help researchers fill in gaps of history with insights into the lives …