The Serving Library

Join our mailing list and we will let you know when we release each new collection of bulletins and when we have programs in our space. Follow us in the usual places: and buy our print edition by Sanya Kantarovsky here. The Serving Library produces an eclectic cultural journal of mostly new writing in distinct online and print formats. These discrete texts, or “bulletins,” are released first as downloadable PDFs from this website, then collected in a printed volume every autumn.

Each new batch is assembled around a loose theme for an international audience of designers, artists, writers, and researchers. Previous themes include Time, Pedagogy, Typography, Psychedelia, Germany, Fashion, Numbers, Mediums, Sports, Redux, Color, Perspective, Public Fiction, and Translation.

The most recent edition, published in September 2019, comprises the first English translation of the late Italian polymath Bruno Munari’s 1971 book Codice Ovvio [Obvious Code], along with copious margin notes from fans and commentators both dead and alive. The next one will be produced in tandem with our long-term residency at 019 in Ghent, being a catalog of our collection of (mostly) framed objects with excerpts from the texts they were originally tethered to. The Serving Library Annual is now published by Roma Publications and distributed by Idea Books. All available back issues of the journal and its predecessors are available at Motto Books and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. It is also available for purchase in print from this website, either as single issues or on a subscription basis .

It is preceded by Bulletins of The Serving Library (2011–17), based on the themes above) and Dot Dot Dot (2000–10). The full backstory is addressed to any past, present or future Dear Subscriber .