Pamphlets -- not ephemeral any more

In the end-of-May issue of Allen County Public Library's "Genealogy Gems" email newsletter (not yet on line here, but earlier issues are), Cynthia Theusch describes the library's microfiche collection of Pamplets in American History -- more than 17,000 of them, fortunately with a set of printed descriptive indexes, one for each of the five volumes.

Chances are this collection will serve you as context for family history rather than an original source, but you never know. The five volumes as Theusch describes them are thematically organized, and cover
(1) "Revolutionary War, Revolutionary War biography, biography, women, and Indians";
(2) "civil liberties, labor, and tariffs and free trade";
(3) "cooperative societies, finance, the Mexican War, socialism, and the War of 1812";
(4) "Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism and the Spanish-American War"; and
(5) "Mormons and Mormonism, the Civil War, and the European War, 1914-1918."

After visiting this library regularly for almost ten years, I'm still being surprised by what it has.