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.

Comments

[Benjamin L. Clark]

This is very interesting! A Beaufort for ephemera. I'd like to see some examples. Run some ephemera through the scale and show us what a score/grade looks like. I think you're planning to do this, but I'm too anxious to wait.

One thing that could be very difficult to measure is (A) the quantity of an item printed. The target audience is a good, but rough guide. I can't think of anything as effective, certainly nothing more effective.

The scale slips off into subjectivity and "probabilities", but nearly all history does. I think we need some things defined. Like (C), what is "highly restricted" intended use vs. multi-purpose? Like a matchbook- usually limited to the life of 20 matches (on a windy night, that could be very short), or is it multi-purpose?

(B) Also perhaps needs more definition. For instance, how do I score something that was not expected to last very long, but expected to be used up over a few months? Is that multiple or monthly? Or is something "monthly" if I use it once a month?

This scale is really wonderful and it is certainly evident a lot of thought and consideration has gone into it. I think it will be a helpful tool, especially to people who do not deal much with ephemera, to understand what makes a piece special. It could also be very helpful to collection managers and archivists to help quantify the scarcity of ephemera in museum and library/archive collections.

[Cliff Aliperti]

This is great stuff, thanks so much for sharing. I hope it's okay, but I did a post on the Weil-Ptak Scale and applied it to a couple of items. Of course I also delved into what I thought the scale meant and could mean, I hope I drew the correct conclusions.

I ended up with my suggestions after applying the scale to a couple of items, here's how that bit went:

"Suggestions: Casual things I picked up in applying the grades to these specific items. Item B, usage, was tough for me to apply. Especially to the newspaper insert. My guess is the intended usage is for a kid to pin the item on their wall for a few weeks until it falls off. But a supplement falls into all spaces in between with the possibility of being thrown out the same day, to being framed in a display forever. Item C, purpose, either needs grades 4-2 to be defined or more clearly explained if 1 and 5 are the only grades. F, Age, may need more than 5 points, or perhaps have points 4 and 5 combined with a new point 2 (100-200 years old) inserted between current points 2 and 1. Actually I think the age category could use the most work, but could be most easily corrected as well.

"All in all this is great work though, and honestly I didn’t notice any of my suggestions when I read the post, only upon application. I hope to see more!"

Thanks again, Cliff