Trade catalogues in the Winterthur Library. (Winterthur).(Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum)

The Winterthur Library will be fifty years old in 2002. Founded to serve the staff of the muse-urn and the students in the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, it has attracted an increasing number of visiting researchers. It has also been a well-placed vantage point from which to observe the advent of fresh areas of research and popular trends in documentation, which today include turn-of-the-century women's magazines, child-rearing manuals, household advice books, photographs, and trade literature. As interest has grown in the nonelite material culture of the more recent past, so has the library's collection of sources that show us the stuff of everyday life and ...