[Air-L] Free digital edition of The Fluxus Reader now available

[Ken Friedman]

Dear Colleagues,

The Fluxus Reader has been out of print for many years now. In the run-up to the 50th anniversary of Fluxus in 2012, I've been getting requests for copies -- I don't have any, and I don't know anyone who does. It's clearly been a desirable book for some time. Owen Smith told me that he was already seeing used copies at $300 a few years back. Today, I did an Amazon search for used copies, and I found prices running from $449 up to $2,500! (The expensive copy seems to have a drawing in it, but even the "cheap" copies cost too much.)

For a while, now I've wanted to make a free digital edition available, but the small typeface has made it difficult to get a clean copy. Rebecca Parker, manager of the Research Bank here at the Swinburne University library has gone to an expert outside service to prepare, digitize, and proof The Fluxus Reader. The digital copy is now available for download at:

http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/42234

Download times are swift over the net, but the complete book runs 36MB. To make it easy for those who only wish one chapter, Ms. Parker has also prepared a single PDF for each chapter for use as stand-alone texts. To preserve the coherence and continuity of the book, Rebecca set each chapter up with the front matter for the entire book.

The book is an open access edition, configured for full search and accessible for copy and paste for scholars or students who wish to quote from the book. All details and pages are identical with the print edition. The PDF files are set to print out on a full-page format for easy reading.

In my contract with the publisher, I kept the copyright of the book as editor. In making the digital edition of the Fluxus Reader available, I do so granting full permission for use in any format or medium.

Please feel free to share this information, to distribute the URL, or to copy the book. Any library that wishes to add the Fluxus Reader to its digital resources collection is free to do so.

Best regards,

Ken

Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | kenfriedman at groupwise.swin.edu.au | Ph: +61 3 9214 6078 | Faculty www.swinburne.edu.au/design

Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life | University of Chicago Press | http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?isbn=9780226033594