The FIT Library holds a very wide variety of periodicals, most of which can be found in the Periodicals Department on the fourth floor of the Goodman building. Across the hall, SPARC also holds periodicals that might require a special environment due to their fragility or rarity.
In general, SPARC holds magazine titles that were either published before the 1980s, or that are very rare and difficult to find, such as issues of La belle assemblée, or the April 1965 space issue of Harper's Bazaar that has a winking model on the cover (there's a lenticular eye glued to the front).
To search for any periodical title, and find out whether it's in SPARC or the Periodicals department, use the library's OneSearch Catalog. SPARC also lists its periodicals holdings in the index below.
SPARC holds a very wide variety of magazine titles that sometimes focused on very niche readerships. We hold industry publications that went out to workers from industries including textiles, men's tailors, hair stylists and more. We also hold society magazines, publications just for teen girls, for interior design, menswear, and tons of serials on womenswear. We even hold a variety of catalogs, like Sears Roebuck.
The date range of the magazines we have generally starts in the 1800s and goes roughly into the 1970s. We have some rare publications that are newer than that, but most publications starting in the 1980s can be found in the Periodicals department.
SPARC's Periodicals Index is a spreadsheet that lists what periodical titles we hold, their call numbers, the most general subjects each title covers, what issues we have, and a link to the title's catalog record. You can sort the table in various ways and search for key subject terms.
Note that our periodicals holdings may be missing individual issues or groups of issues within the available date range. This occurrence is signified using the phrase “gaps in holdings” and all catalog records will list the issues we have.
Enlarge the index by clicking on "View larger version" on the bottom-right of this section. The index will pop out into a new window.
To discover periodicals published long ago and use them as primary historical sources for your research subject matter, you need to know what each title focused on and what its primary demographic used to be.
An annotated bibliography by Lubna Contractor provides detailed historical context on many of SPARC's periodicals available in FIT's online repository.
This article from the Library of Congress, "Fashion & French Women's Press," may also be helpful.
