An archive of ephemera seems almost a contradiction in terms. If archives come into being because governments and individuals preserve papers they consider to be worth keeping, then an archive should be a crystallisation of past and present values concerning texts. Most of Nigeria's archives are in fact that kind of crystallisation, whether they are local government records, newspaper collections, Arabic-language chronicles, or little-known collections of personal letters and diaries, preserved because the individuals concerned, and subsequently their heirs, had a sense of their value.