The Lost and Found Times

Unfortunately the conversation I had with Pete is too long to be uploaded to Tumblr, but no worry! Just click here and you should be able to listen to it through Google Drive. If not, please shoot us an ask and we’ll contact you directly. 

SWELLING     1998     John M. Bennett

More Product, Less Process

More Product, Less Process

Greene and Meissner believe there is fat to be trimmed from every step of the process, starting with  arrangement, saying “we need to articulate a new set of arrangement, preservation and description guidelines that 1) expedites getting collection materials into the hands of the users, 2) assures arrangement of materials adequate to user needs, 3) takes the minimal steps necessary to physically preserve collection materials and 4) describes materials sufficient to promote use.” (Greene and Meissner, 212-213). Instead of focusing on the ideal, which is that we would be able to create searchable databases of every item in our collections, we need to make things available at a level which promotes access. Maybe the back cover of an in-demand book isn’t on the book, but the rest of the text block is intact. Instead of making the item sit in Conservation for days, weeks, or months, why not at least provide a way for it to be used NOW? If staff is busy, there is no reason a new collection should languish for years because no one has the time to look at and describe every sheet of every folder in every box. 

Everyone knows that when alphabetizing, you skip over “a” “the”, etc, but what about those words in other languages? We ran into this problem with a few of the zines in our collection during processing and alphabetizing. It turns out you treat them just as you would in English, and skip to the first “real” word of the title.

John M. Bennett is a visual/audio artist and poet. He was born in Chicago in 1942, and has been active in the Fluxus art movement for decades, founding his “Luna Bisonte Prods“ press in 1974. He holds a PhD in Latin American Literature from UCLA, and his work is held in may major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. John is the editor and publisher of over 400 diverse works, including the zine titled “Lost and Found Times” from 1975-2005, and is Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries.

Fortunately, The Lost and Found Times may now be considered “light”.

Making sure the collection was in perfect alphabetical order, with all the titles and authors correct was a process made more arduous by the nature of Fluxus;)

Boxed! We finished boxing the collection, approximately 1.5 feet.

The entire staff was very kind to us during our project, answering our manifold questions, helping us get supplies, and doing whatever else they could to help! Here is Pete, who is responsible for bringing The Lost and Found Times to the collection.

No coincidence, no story! While we were sorting/boxing the collection, we took a break and started chatting with a researcher at the next table. His collection was a whole set of cassettes, and it turned out he had one with John Bennett!

Andy, hard at work during our boxing night.

Many of the ephemeral pieces in our collection were hard to read, because they consisted of one sheet of paper, printed on both sides, but stapled into a book. What was John Bennett’s point?

This one we had to call “Untitled” in the naming, something that isn’t TOO uncommon in Fluxus. The real trouble comes when a piece is intentionally called “Untitled”.

This one came with a cassette! We wanted to listen, but department policy is to send it away to have it made into a digital copy, to hopefully prevent disasters like the tape being eaten up by a player.