Library Excavations #3: Periodical Business

2016
Paper cover with staple-bound binding 
Color offset and four-color Risograph
5 1/2" x 8 1/2"
32 pages
Edition of 516

The third issue of Library Excavations, which will be an ongoing Public Collectors booklet series. From the back cover:

The Chicago Public Library’s Harold Washington Library Center is home to a vast collection of bound business periodicals. The many shelves are filled with titles­ that will be foreign to industry outsiders. Some date back to the late 1800s. These are primarily publications sent directly to business executives and their company offices, or to institutional libraries, rather than newsstands. The beauty of a public library is that visitors with zero credentials can enjoy decades’ worth of these insider publications, without ever improving our work wardrobes or falsifying our credentials.
This booklet is also an appreciation of the binderies that collate and sew these magazines into indestructible bound volumes. The foil stamped titles on the hard covers have a leveling effect, allowing us to consider Modern Power Systems alongside Quick Frozen Foods, as though power plants and pizza are equally important. These photos were taken in July and August 2016. I hope that they will entice others to explore these periodicals, and interrogate the value systems, ideologies, and visual pleasures they contain. — Marc Fischer