Supported projects

The Musée Carnavalet and the museums and specialized libraries of the city of Paris preserve extensive collections of ephemera—everyday documents that rapidly became obsolete, such as menus, announcements, brochures, catalogs, and theater programs. Each item is documented through metadata that records its creators (artists, printers) as well as the techniques and materials employed. While these descriptions provide partial insight into the processes of production and dissemination, they remain insufficient for reconstructing the professional networks involved. Parisian commercial directories, the predecessors of the Yellow Pages, which listed merchants, artisans, and notables, constitute an essential complementary source. The SODUCO project (ANR-18-CE38-0013) has already converted a substantial number of these directories, published between 1797 and 1914, into a geographical database comprising 22 million entries. Cross- referencing this resource with the metadata of the ephemera now enables new avenues of analysis. This internship aims to develop a methodology based on creating, populating, and analysing a knowledge graph dedicated to ephemera, with the objective of investigating the professional networks involved in their creation, printing, and dissemination. Three principal directions are envisaged: (1) constructing a graph linking ephemera metadata with entries from the commercial directories; (2) analyzing this graph to identify the central actors in ephemera production; and (3) exploiting geolocation data to reveal potential spatial dynamics underlying the organization of professional networks connected to ephemera in nineteenth-century Paris.

Legend: Advertising leaflet for the opening of the new “Au Pauvre Diable” stores, 1 and 3 rue Montesquieu, 11 rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs. Testu & Massin, Printer. 1874. CC0 Paris Museums / Carnavalet Museum – History of Paris.