In 1951, L. S. Alexander Gumby donated his vast collection of handmade scrapbooks to Columbia University. Preserved institutionally in Rare Book & Manuscript section at Butler Library, Alexander Gumby Collection of Negroiana, [ca. 1800]–1981 compiles local materials about the impact of the Harlem Renaissance at home and abroad and records of its worldwide audience and appeal. By combining artistic and historiographic aims and blending cultural historiography and sentimental history, Gumby develops a crossover form of vernacular historiography that defies generic categorization and straddles the fields of artistic production and social historiography. The project’s scope and the multi-dimensionality of its records transform the traditional and highly idiosyncratic scrapbook format into a curatorial project with clear political, conservationist, and aesthetic implications. By focusing on Gumby’s choice of material, method of archiving, and book-making techniques, this chapter develops a form-sensitive reading to show how the documenting practices he develops transform scrapbooking into an archival practice. Drawing on the ongoing theorization of literary worlds within world-literature studies, this chapter argues that Gumby’s material practices of assemblage, categorization, and exhibition allow his collection to reappraise the dynamics between world-historical and local perspectives and stage a dialogue among the competing national, local, and global outlooks shaped the period’s aesthetics and politics.