Columbia Journalism Review: MEET EDDA SCISSORHANDS

Crammed into a quaint house in north London is one of the largest private archives of newspaper and magazine clippings from the past two centuries. Edda Tasiemka, an eighty-two-year-old native of Hamburg, Germany, built and oversees the ever-growing collection. Tasiemka, who fields dozens of calls a week from writers seeking background material, has been likened to a human Google. But she has a unique filing system, and, in some ways, a deeper memory.

On one recent Monday, twenty requests came in. One was about the fallen pop duo MiIIi Vanilli; another was for the British broadcaster John Humphrys. She charges anywhere from about $64 to $550 a search. Three full-time employees help sort and photocopy. The collection includes clips from decades of London's daily newspapers and weekly magazines from around the world, including Time and vogue.

An armoire in the living room houses ten thick file folders on Bill Clinton, and there are stacks for other American icons including John D. Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan. Others have been annexed to a nearby self-storage locker. She shows off a London illustrated News clip about Abraham Lincoln, dated 1863.

"This one," she says, pointing to a multidrawer antique, "is entirely occupied by General de Gaulle."

Downstairs, there are hundreds of folders for literary figures, gambling, and the British army The soccer legend Diego Maradona is in the upstairs bathroom, while the current superstar David Beckham is in Tasiemka's bedroom, so to speak.

Edda and her husband Hans were both journalists. They started the archive in 1949 for their own reference. As well as cutting articles from newspapers and magazines, they began buying up old journals from bookshops. Eventually, friends started asking to borrow some of the clippings, and the rest, as they say . . .

Hans Tasiemka died in 1979. Edda, who has no living family, knows her cutting days will end eventually. She hopes to find a caretaker for the archive. (The late newspaper baron Robert Maxwell showed an interest, as did the photography mogul Mark Getty.) "Ideally I'm thinking about a university with a media program, which could have the students run it."

A tour continues in the loft, where cupboards are filled with topics ranging from disasters to farflung countries. "We've still got some of Hitler in here," she says, when a yellow folder peeks out behind her from piles near the banister. Scrawled on it in black magic marker is "Hans and Edda Tasiemka," a sign that this couple, and their houseful of clippings, are themselves a piece of history.

- Jeffrey Coldfarb