Now available: The Philip & Rosamund Davies US Elections Campaigns Archive

A century of presidential campaign buttons, 1908-2008

The Philip & Rosamund Davies US Elections Campaigns Archive, which was donated to the VHL by Professor Philip Davies (Director, Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library), has now been fully catalogued and can be made available to researchers. The archive is an extensive collection of campaign ephemera from US elections at all levels, and comprises a wide range of material, from buttons, posters, bumper stickers, flyers and leaflets to more unusual examples of campaign ephemera such as t-shirts, caps, dolls, rain bonnets, jewellery, bars of soap, playing cards and commemorative plates. The majority of the material dates from the later 20th century onwards, but there are examples of older items such as 19th and early 20th century campaign buttons, and ballots from the Civil War era. The archive continues to grow as Professor Davies actively collects and donates material from each round of elections in the United States.

The archive catalogue can now be viewed online. If you are interested in consulting material from this collection please contact jane.rawson@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

For more information about the archive, as well as links to images and a video of Professor Davies discussing the role of campaign ephemera, please see http://vhlresources.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-philip-rosamund-davies-us-elections.html

Selected items from the archive are on display in the library until after the November 6th elections.