It’s helpful for Digital Library Services to examine usage statistics about the Iowa Digital Library to see where site traffic comes from and which collections have more or less hits.  Sometimes, it’s just fun to see outside links pointing to unexpected places.  The Springer Printing Ephemera is a digital collectiton containing samples from various printing companies, calendars and political clippings amassed by Iowa City printer John Springer.

The Libraries are adding each and every piece in the collection, so that it will be a comprehensive surrogate for the archival collection, and a valuable tool for studying the history of printing and typography.  Although not a heavily publicized collection, we noticed that the Design Observer Group picked an image from the Springer Collection for their daily selection of… “things lost on the fringes…ordinary, odd, beautiful things. Esoteric images, old diagrams, typography, cartography — visions of a once promising but now extinct future.”

And this image of a cow, advertising cream-colored paper from the Seymour Company of New York, made the cut.

–Mark Anderson
Digital Initiatives Librarian