International Archive Standard Black and White microfilm film 35x6000mm

Historical Background

The Private Case is a world famous collection of erotica now housed at the British Library. It originated in the early nineteenth century as a shelf of unclassified books in the Librarian's Office at the British Museum. These books were not entered onto the public catalogue for fear of an outcry from the public and pressure from social purity movements such as the 'Society for the Restoration of Manners and the Suppression of Vice,'. As the collection grew, books were entered into a catalogue for use by the curators only with a number and the initials 'PC', standing for Private Case. But these entries were not added to the public reference catalogue in the library. The books in the collection were not illegal so much as scandalous, they included sexological works and books on birth control as well as luxury and rare editions of pornographic works. The problem was an institutional one - how could the British Museum be seen to house and offer open access to such improper material? Perhaps the forgotten context for this was the shift to allow the general public into the library at all! Antonio Panizzi the head keeper of books, compiler of the British Library catalogue, designer of the round reading room and initiator of the unclassified Private Case, was a lead protagonist in the campaign to make books available to all; to keep the library open after work hours, and make it open to anyone, free of charge, regardless of their class, race, sex or education.

As with other 'private' collections in public museums and libraries - the solution at the British Museum was to split off the problematic material, to keep it off the record, only offering it to specialists and authorised researchers when requested. As a result many public institutions in the 19th century produced an illogical new category of objects and books which were housed and catalogued together for no other reason than the potential embarrassment they might cause.
These reserved collections now offer contemporary researchers insights into the history of these institutions, and may be of special relevance for women who are doubly implicated in this history - being thought of, along with children as the 'innocent' who need protecting from degrading, explicit material, whilst also being the subject of much of it. The protection of children from child pornography is one thing, the structural exclusion of women readers from the cultural discourse of sexuality, in the library is another, and a very serious curtailment of intellectual curiosity and freedom.
Over the last 100 years attitudes to sexuality have changed, and over the last decade many libraries and museums have moved objects and books out of their 'Secret Museums' back into their general collections. On one hand the desegregation of these books and objects is perfectly modern and in line with contemporary thinking on matters of sexuality, and intellectual integrity. On the other, the restructuring that is taking place can be seen as an erosion of the material evidence of the index and catalogue as an organising machine in the construction of the category of the modern obscene. And in this sense, these changes are not an act of liberation. An important, I would say central machine in the history of sexuality is being updated, very like an update on a computer operating system, and the old system is deleted. Changes made now try and undo and forget the Victorian precedents, but the context of these changes is complex, and cannot be seen as a simple move towards openness but rather as a symptom of a technological/power shift - that gate keeping by the museum or library is no longer a means to control access to information. This has been an emergent threat since the invention of printing, but the world wide web offers access to information without precedent.
In addition to the loss or shift that this represents, there are clearly existential struggles taking place in these older cultural institutions which are now plagued by marketing drives and attendance targets. It is somehow very telling that as feminists, artists and theorists want to rummage in the more obsolete classifications of the library and museum, the demands of modern transparency and accessibility are liquefying them in front of our eyes.

Changed Press Marks of the Private Case is about the history of sexuality and the history of Information Management, storage and classification. It is made on microfilm - a 35mm black and white film which is the International Archive Standard material used for documentation. It is intended to be seen on a microfilm reader in a library or archive. It documents the paper records of over 800 books which have changed category, or 'press mark' from Private Case books to a less restrictive classification within the library schema. Changed Press Marks of the Private Case is an art work about documentation as well as being a source of information for researchers, and forms part Salaman's work on 19th century collections of erotica in public libraries and museums. It was funded by London Arts and is being distributed, free of charge to forty libraries in the UK and abroad. Currently it is held at The British Library; Goldsmiths College Library; The Washington Art Library; The National Library of Scotland; The Getty Research Library; Chelsea College of Art Library.