Periodical Ramblings (The Series)

Periodical Ramblings

    It does not matter if they are called, ‘periodicals’, ‘magazines’, ‘serials’ or ‘journals’, I have always enjoyed and been interested in them. Genes may be involved. One of my sisters had an entire sunroom full of magazines, with stacks of them almost as high as the piles of those found in her basement. Those who do not share this trait generally lack the ability to recognize the value of, say a May 2004 issue of Coastal Living or even a small stack of Harpers from the last century. That is the case especially when the magazines are not, in fact, worth anything and the archive is free online. Those of us who do, have a more refined sense of the intrinsic worth of those stacks of serials even when they remain dormant and undusted.

    It is not a good thing these days to put too much emphasis on the ‘nature’ side of the ledger, so let me add some support for the ‘nurture’ side as an explanation for my/our interest in reading and keeping bundles of bound paper. Perhaps it starts with the magazine rack in the front of our parent’s restaurant. I do remember thumbing through publications like Collier’s, the Saturday Evening Post and,The Hit Parader, which should give you some indication of both my adolescent interests back then  and my age now.

The Periodical Room

     

     Exposure in later life to many many magazines, serials, journals and newspapers in the Periodical Reading Room of a university ensured that I would end up perusing periodicals rather than studying. Later still, as an employee in such a room, I was able to stack piles of such publications around me and then wait for students to ask me questions about them. There were so many journals that there were journals that did nothing but provide you with the table of contents of journals. If you were serious you could simply grab one issue of Current Contents: Arts and Humanities and see if there were any new articles about dipthongs in hundreds of journals. If you were really serious you could look in Current Contents: Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences and learn about something molecularly complex. Or if you were merely intellectually adventurous you could wander about until you were distracted by a nice cover or the pictures in Paris Match.

    Having rambled on long enough about the origin of my interest in journals  and magazines I will now turn to the purpose of Periodical Ramblings. In it, I plan to sally forth among the serials and see what I find. Many old magazines ceased publication or changed titles. Others simply disappeared. Many new ones exist primarily in electronic form. For that reason the ‘Periodical Rooms’ in many libraries have also disappeared and the spaces that once housed paper periodicals and the old bound issues have been ‘re-purposed’. The serials are now likely out-of sight and off-sight in a storage facility. Perhaps you will enjoy ‘browsing’ through some of them again here.

P.S.

    In periodical rooms of old, students were actually employed to put paper newspapers on poles.

The Saturday Evening Post

    Although many magazines have folded, you may be surprised to learn that this one continues. I found this out a few years ago when visiting the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA.

Here is the link for The Saturday Evening Post.

The Norman Rockwell Museum is here.

For a Canadian article about this publication see:

'Timing is right for this'; All-but-forgotten Saturday Evening Post to Undergo Major OverhauL,” Janet Whitman, Financial Post, May 17, 2008,