Library Excavations #1: Correctional Advertising

Library Excavations is a project and publication series that highlights and activates physical materials found in public libraries. Public Collectors prefers direct experiences of physical media over the digital. Library Excavations encourages intensive browsing of paper and print resources, particularly those that are under-utilized, or at risk of being withdrawn and discarded. 

The ads in Library Excavations #1 are taken from the industry periodical Corrections Today, the professional membership magazine of the American Correctional Association, accessed in the Open Stacks of Chicago Public Library's Harold Washington Library Centre in 2016.

Excerpt from the back cover:

"The companies associated with these ads market to and represent the concerns of the prison industry. Common themes are: liability, preventing escape, demonstrating durability of products against abuse, addressing overcrowding, surveillance, securing mechanical operations, and saving money. .While some prisoners are depicted in humanizing ways, most often they are stereotypically brutish, mean, or sad-looking and counter factually white....Jokes are commonly made at the expense of the incarcerated" - Marc Fischer

Author
Marc Fischer

Publisher
Public Collectors

Publication Date
2016

Binding
Softcover, staple-bound, offset three-colour risograph

Size
5.5 x 8.5 inches
32 pages
Edition of 517

Language
English

About the Publisher
Public Collectors was founded in 2007 by Marc Fischer, upon the concern that there are many types of cultural artifacts that public libraries, museums and other institutions and archives either do not collect or do not make freely accessible. Public Collectors asks individuals that have had the luxury to amass, organize, and inventory these materials to help reverse this lack by making their collections public.