Ephemera- Printed material, intended to have only fleeting interest. "Ephemera" comes from the Greek word "ephemeros" meaning "lasting a day." Examples are: tickets, leaflets, promotional literature or pamphlets, handbills, package labels, campaign buttons or badges, scrapbooks, maps, sheet music, bird's-eye views, playbills, posters, postcards (see deltiologist), especially the "business-reply" postcards that come inserted in magazines, and other junk mail.
Since these things are produced cheaply, with short-lived acidic materials, museologists and art conservators find it difficult to preserve visual art produced without high technical standards, as they do in preserving sketches made on such papers as newsprint. Museums and collectors face a dilemma: whether to allow works to decay and die, to linger in the form of documentation, or to try to embalm or replicate them. Institutions must balance the demands of managers, conservators, curators, and artists to ensure visitors the most authentic experience possible of aging works' physical and aesthetic properties.
Much ephemera is collected as memorabilia.
