On Saturday, August 24, the Magazines and Newspapers Center presented a program featuring an intriguing selection of magazines from SFPL's extensive archive of bound volumes. Presented in partnership with the Art, Music, and Recreation Center, the activity was called Bound Magazine Bingo, and participants were given bingo cards whose squares had different types of content you could expect to find in historic magazines. The objective was to find examples of the types of content on the bingo cards in the magazines in order to win a prize.
What is a bound magazine?
Magazines are published as individual issues per time interval (week, month, bi-monthly, etc.) and after a certain amount of issues have been published, the library's team sends them to a bindery to get combined into a single volume. Using the term "bound magazines" is meant to signify the historical characteristic of the object; if a magazine's issues have been around long enough to be bound, then it is no longer "current" and has passed into the realm of presumed historical significance.
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| A participant looks through a volume of McCall's next to a book cart of bound magazines |
How do you play bingo with bound magazines?
Rather than participants relying on a person calling numbers to mark on a bingo card, they are self-directed in attempting to find various content types in the magazines. The content types for which they search are indicated on the squares on the bingo cards, and participants mark off the content types they find with a highlighter. Those who mark off a row, column, or diagonal of squares can win a prize, and anyone who can achieve a "black-out card"--getting every single square--wins a grand prize.
Honestly though, participants just loved the ability to freely graze on the interesting selection of magazines on hand.
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| Participants play bingo with bound magazines |
What magazines were included?
A librarian from the Art, Music, and Recreation Center at the Main Library curated the selection of magazines, and drew heavily on design magazines of all types. Anyone up for some Art Direction, Communication Arts, Step-by-Step Graphics, or Designers West? The selection also included staples from annals of American magazines like McCall's, Vogue, Thrasher, and Better Homes and Gardens. Special shout-out to the extremely historically significant magazine Soviet Life, volumes of which we had on hand for 1967 and 1980.
>> See the full list of magazines.
You can request any of these magazines on the 5th floor of the Main Library even if you missed the bingo game!
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| Two carts holdings the selection of bound magazines pulled for the game |
Hopefully soon! Let us know a time that would work for your schedule in the comments.
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| An example of one of three bingo cards! |
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