The Weil-Ptak "Standardized" Ephemera Scale

I'm pleased to announce the debut of Weil-Ptak (WP) Ephemera Scale, which measures the nature of how ephemeral printed material (e.g., postcards, letters, books, bus transfers, tickets, etc.) relates to one another. The brainchild of John Ptak, the WP Ephemera Scale standardizes the relative indicators of what makes something ephemera into six principal categories and grades them on a scale of 5 through 30, least ephemeral to most. The indicators approximate the printed item's importance, distribution, susceptibility for being saved, durability, age, and purpose.

The scale is easy to used, is only six questions long, and should take about a minute, or less, to use. It is currently being developed into an automated program that will be available here and elsewhere on the Web. The purpose of today's post, however, is to unveil the concept to the ephemera community in hopes of receiving your thoughts on the scale and its potential usability.

THE WP EPHEMERA SCALE

Measures A-E, graded along a 5-1 scale, going from smallest to largest, least obscure to most common.

(A) Place of origin/population target. (Approximation of how many of these printed items were made.) What sort of population was it printed for? (5) town (4) region (3) city (2) state (1) country

(B) Amount of usage/intended amount of use of the printed item. (5) Single, one-time usage (implying it was collected after use/thrown away) (4) multiple (3) monthly (2) yearly (1) lifetime

(C) Purpose of the printed item. (5) Very highly restricted (1) very widely employed, multi-purpose

(D) Savability--reasons why the item might have been saved. (5) Very low (reason to save it, like an unused bus transfer, laundry ticket; OR, the item was collected after use; (4) Low (intended for a single use but was not necessarily collected once used (like a movie stub); (3) Medium (2) High (1) very high reason to save (like wedding photos, military troop photos, baby pictures, that sort)

(E) Medium (the physical object itself and the stuff it is made of, meaning that if it was flimsy, toilet-paper-like material it would just not stand the test of time better than, say, a vellum document. It was made to be dispensable.) (5) Flimsy, potentially volatile material; (4) newsprint (3) cheap paper but better than newsprint (2) strong, good book-paper (1) very strong (vellum, thick, cover-stock paper

(F) Age. (5) New (4) Newish to 5 years old (3) 6-25 years old (4) 26-100 years old (1) 200+ years old

WP Scale is provided by the Ephemera Blog & JF Ptak Science Books LLC (Since 1985) at thesciencebookstore.com.