Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word realia. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word realia, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say realia in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word realia you have here. The definition of the word realia will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofrealia, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
"We acquire entire collections of materials for research purposes," explains Saundra Taylor, curator of manuscripts at the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington. "That inevitably includes something that's not books or manuscripts."Such as? "We have teeth, hair, all kinds of goofy things like that," says Katharine Salzmann, archivist and manuscripts curator at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. "We don't set out to buy them. It's just a happenstance kind of thing. Someone tosses them in the box, or forgets they're in the envelope."These unanticipated acquisitions are referred to in the trade variously as personal effects, ephemera, artifacts, memorabilia and, perhaps most evocatively, realia.