Wishbook's Flickr Photos
 Merriam-Webster defines "ephemera" as "paper items... that were originally meant to be discarded after use but have since become collectibles." We have an undying love for those "here today, gone tomorrow" printed materials that clog this nation's greatest landfills.
We also have a special place in our heart for the folks who preserve and collect ephemeral items. The age-old axiom about one man's trash being another man's treasure always rings true with us. Never is the maxim more relevant than when we run across a guy like Alan Swegan. Alan's always been into collecting things, but his crowning achievements on the Web are the crystal-clear scans of his old catalog collection, which he shares on Flickr. His photostream is a magnificent walk down an oh-so-memorable lane. After flipping through an entire catalog, we knew we had to talk to the man behind this awesome archive. Alan started uploading his scans to the photo-sharing site in 2005, and he was kind enough to take a break from scanning to chat with us about catalogs, Christmas, and copyright... Hey Alan, how long does it take to scan in and upload a 500-page catalog? Initially I tried to keep the catalogs intact, but flipping the book over and over got tiresome after 20 pages and there were always problems with the inner spine sections being shaded. Disassembled, I can scan about 75 pages in an hour. Photoshop makes easy work of creating archival lossless JP2Ks and derivative files for Flickr. Generally, it takes about two months to get an entire catalog scanned, archived, and posted. There's still tagging to do (and I've trifled with the idea of OCR'ing all the content), so even when I deplete my collection of Christmas catalogs, there will be lots of work to do. What's the response from the Flickr community been? I'm always tickled by the various, unexpected Flickr users who pop in to leave comments on catalog items they remember most from their childhoods. The things people comment on aren't always the toys and they're not even pages I'd ever predict sparking interest in others, so it makes me glad for posting the whole catalog—and not just details of my favorite things. Many of my Flickr contacts share an interest in the commercial characters who figure prominently in our lives. Others just have amazing and inspirational collections of ephemeral items. Seeing people who specialize in things like cereal packages, bumper stickers, Portuguese news clippings, and the 1950's Superfamily is not only entertaining, but also keeps me returning to my Christmas catalog theme. When did you start catalog collecting? Several years ago, I realized that you could get practically anything through the Internet and I started thinking about what I'd choose if I could have anything I wanted. It was around the holidays and that reminded me of the Christmas catalogs—specifically the Sears "Wish Book" catalogs—and how those catalogs helped kids assemble lists of all the things we wanted for Christmas. It'd been years since I thought about those catalogs, so I checked to see if I could find any. Sure enough, there were several up for auction, so I selected two choice years from my youth: 1979 and 1983. What did you find when you dove back into the catalogs? Initially, it was just the pure nostalgia of seeing toys I'd gotten for Christmas, combined with a great admiration for what my parents must have saved and sacrificed to try to make our Christmases exciting. Later, when I saw how much joy others took from the catalog I loved most, I started acquiring different years to share with folks older and younger than me. Did you grow up with the Wishbook and other Christmas catalogs? Was it a big part of your childhood? Ours was a one-catalog family. While we had access to a Montgomery Ward outlet (and could leaf through its Christmas catalogs at the counter), they somehow weren't as exciting as the Sears Wish Books. Comparing the two companies' catalogs now, I think we only favored the Wish Books because they were larger—which meant more pages of toys to drool over. My younger brothers and I coveted the Wish Book and eagerly awaited the annual arrival in its brown wrapping paper. As much as we wanted the catalog all to ourselves, it was the time of year when being greedy didn't look good in Santa's eyes, so we ultimately shared custody of the catalog as genially as possible given our different interests. The catalogs weren't just convenient delights for us; they were an outright necessity as we lived in a city of only a few thousand people and were two hours away from the nearest big city. Even though we'd go to Las Vegas at least once during the holiday season, practically everything we received for Christmas came from the Sears Christmas catalogs. What's your favorite page you've scanned in? A particularly memorable item? Believe it or not, the most memorable catalog page I scanned didn't have any products on it. It was a 1971 catalog insert telling customers how Sears was determined to comply with the President's price-freeze order of 1971. I'd never heard of such an order, and I was far too young to remember it. It got me doing a lot of research about the era; about Nixon's decision to drop out of the Bretton Woods monetary management system; and about a whole bunch of related news items that still have modern resonance. Despite how these catalogs may appear to be a glorification of greed and materialism, I look at them as reflections (albeit commercially distorted) of our societal values. At the very least, the catalogs can tell us when ideas, fads, and fashions went mainstream. Do you have catalogs you're still looking for? Eventually, it'd be great to archive a holiday catalog for every year of the 20th century. The WWII era catalogs were the ones I wanted most, and thankfully I've already acquired them. I have plenty of work to do with the catalogs I already own, so I haven't really thought about which specific ones I'd still like to find. Additionally, my partner-in-scanning, WishbookJason, has already acquired a number of 1950's and 1960's catalogs that had been too expensive for me to buy, so I'm kinda waiting to see what happens with those. I would be very remiss if I didn't mention his web site, Wishbook Web. His flickr photostream is also not-to-be-missed. Are there more catalogs left to scan? I have a few more catalogs left to scan: 1981, 1977, 1988, and a couple from the early 1990's. Finally, where do you stand on copyright issues? I was delighted to find a 1955 Spiegel graphic urging potential customers to share catalogs with friends and neighbors. I made it my Flickr profile picture, because that is the true spirit of these catalogs. They were a means to commercial ends long ago realized by Sears, JC Penney, Spiegel, Eaton's and Montgomery Ward—not commercial ends in and of themselves. Having these catalogs posted for others to enjoy again generates a great deal of goodwill for these companies—companies that are fortunate enough to have profited from and to be indelibly linked to our collective past—even if some of them have waned or have ceased to exist. Well said, Alan! Thanks for letting the world have a peek at your copious catalog collection. Keep on scannin'!
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