books, pamphlets, and periodicals

October 26, 2004 6:58 PM

I was wandering around the internets looking for early twentieth century ephemera and look what I found. Digital Dada Library “This page provides links to some of the major Dada-era publications in the International Dada Archive. These books, pamphlets, and periodicals are housed in the Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa Libraries. …Each document has been scanned in its entirety.” EphemeraNow “is a family-friendly Web site dedicated to the commercial art of mid-century America.” The Ephemera Society “is a non-profit body concerned with the collection, preservation, study and educational uses of printed and handwritten ephemera.” and more! For those of you who have complained that this place is getting too “US politics-filter” I give you Glasgow Digital Library Collections which has all sorts of stuff including a great history of the labour movement in Glasgow 1910-1932
posted by Grod (10 comments total)

gold, grod--thanks. : >
posted by amberglow at 7:07 PM on October 26, 2004

Moose.
posted by Tlogmer at 7:42 PM on October 26, 2004

This is where the party is, not in the 'hey guys, there's a new iPod' thread. The Digital Dada Library is great – I'm reading George Grosz' "Das Gesicht der herrschenden Klasse" right now. Thanks!
posted by Termite at 9:26 PM on October 26, 2004

Wow!

Great serendipity-doo-dah, Grod! This is some fantastic stuff. Thanks!

Just the collection of the Picabia stuff on the Dada page is enough - and it's very nicely displayed and indexed - but there's a helluva lot more!

I love this cover.
posted by soyjoy at 9:34 PM on October 26, 2004

So MSAccess is a Dada Base program?
posted by wendell at 9:51 PM on October 26, 2004

thank you
posted by greasepig at 11:29 PM on October 26, 2004

It strikes me as strange to see Dada documents preserved and presented so reverentially, & I can't help feeling like it is somehow going against the spirit of the documents and their creators… a bit like seeing a deluxe CD box-set re-issue of old punk singles… rather than quietly appreciate these artefacts in museum conditions we would be better off re-interpreting them noisily & obnoxiously to the dismay of a complacent society, etc. Despite these faint misgivings, I guess I'm still glad they've done it & I'm grateful for that link for & the others: thanks Grod.
posted by misteraitch at 2:04 AM on October 27, 2004

misteraitch, I hear ya, but the fact is that re-interpreting them noisily & obnoxiously depends on access to them, not on having them disappear out of sight and trying to reconstruct them from half-remembered anecdotes. Of course the reverential display is perverse (and, therefore, appropriate!), but that doesn't stop anyone from doing something else more outrageous with this stuff.
posted by soyjoy at 6:41 AM on October 27, 2004

Oh thou, [Grod] beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I love thine! Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine, we?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 8:01 AM on October 27, 2004

Great finds -- thanks! I know what I'm doing for the rest of the day...
posted by scody at 10:14 AM on October 27, 2004