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Merriam-Webster defines "ephemera" as "paper items... that were originally meant to be discarded after use but have since become collectibles." We have an undying love for those "here today, gone tomorrow" printed materials that clog this nation's greatest landfills.

We also have a special place in our heart for the folks who preserve and collect ephemeral items. The age-old axiom about one man's trash being another man's treasure always rings true with us.

Never is the maxim more relevant than when we run across a guy like Alan Swegan. Alan's always been into collecting things, but his crowning achievements on the Web are the crystal-clear scans of his old catalog collection, which he shares on Flickr. His photostream is a magnificent walk down an oh-so-memorable lane. After flipping through an entire catalog, we knew we had to talk to the man behind this awesome archive.

Alan started uploading his scans to the photo-sharing site in 2005, and he was kind enough to take a break from scanning to chat with us about catalogs, Christmas, and copyright...

Hey Alan, how long does it take to scan in and upload a 500-page catalog?

Initially I tried to keep the catalogs intact, but flipping the book over and over got tiresome after 20 pages and there were always problems with the inner spine sections being shaded. Read the full profile...

It all began with a charting of Pennsylvania's lunatic asylum districts. That might be an inauspicious start elsewhere, but not here. Welcome to the world of strange maps. Since that initial posting in September of last year, the blogger-collector behind this site has rolled out post after post of eccentric and imaginative maps—"the kind you won't find in a regular atlas." From ancient history to alternate history, from the world according to some two-term presidents to the U.S. according to its politics, the maps displayed here are historic, fake, funny, and marvelous. And sometimes all of the above. We paused over the image of Flash Gordon's native Mongo, ate up the charting of North America's "totem food" regions (oh, to live in Corn Bread and BBQ Nation!), and then located ourselves on both the atlas of the country of Houyhnhnms (where Yahoos, those "deformed, debased humans" reside) and the record of the online communities map. Brrr!

Update: On September 17, Yahoo! Picks talked to the blogger behind Strange Maps. Check out our interview on Y! Picks Profiles.

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