Presented by Hopkins at Home, Sheridan Libraries and Friends of the Johns Hopkins University Libraries

In this digital era of almost constant, rapid-fire information, our hold on knowledge seems more fleeting than ever. But this is hardly a novelty of the 21st century. The invention of “ephemeral” information, and of the 24-hour “news cycle,” began many centuries ago with the advent of cheap, single-sheet print. Our knowledge of that earlier history is imperfect and deeply fragmented, however, since so little of it has been physically preserved.

In this illustrated presentation, Dr. Earle Havens, Nancy H. Hall Curator of Rare Books & Manuscripts, and Director of the Stern Center for the History of the Book in the Renaissance at JHU, joins Stern Center Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Martin Michalek, to highlight how the Sheridan Libraries has become a leader in the recovery and exploration of the nascent, if fragmentary, “ephemeral” information landscape, from the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment.