Album Amicorum are emblem books with blank leaves bound between the printed pages which had to be filled in, with a case shaped like a book as known as Quarto. For women, they had dedications, poems, languages, songs, images (costume drawings, portraits, family crests, emblems) although not every Alba had drawings in them.

From the 1550’s on, many students from the Southern countries started using them, then during the 1800s - 1900s middle class and women started using them too.

An impressive archive of Album Amicorum can be found from the Royal Library of the Netherlands, Koninklijke Bibliotheek. You can search by words, authors or shelf marks.