HISTORY of the TAM-BULLETIN

originally written by Ruud Janssen on July 1996
WWW-version July 1997

INTRODUCTION

When Crackerjack Kid (Chuck Welch) from USA asked me for some more copies of older TAM-Bulletins for his archive, I decided to undertake an even larger task. I started with going through my own archive to select all the information about the TAM- Bulletins that I could find and make a complete book out of it. This work started beginning 1995, but because of the mail- interview project things got postponed again. Now in the Summer-vacation of 1996 I finally succeded in finishing the publication.

In the last year no new TAM-Bulletin was published. Already others have started simular publications, and there is no need to do things double. The TAM-Bulletin has appeared in many forms, and with the history of over 12 years it sure is a well- known name. Because of the limited edition most TAM-Bulletins are published, not many have seen the complete development of the newsmagazine. This book hopefully will change that.

THE HISTORY OF THE TAM-BULLETIN

  1. Introduction. A lot of mail-artists know The TAM-bulletin better then they know my name. This is because this bulletin got very popular in the network since it contained information about all kind of new mail-art projects. The form of the TAM- bulletin has evolved and changed over the years, and will keep on doing so. From a single page to a booklet it turned in the last years into a computerized bulletin only accessible by computer. The most recent form is an ‘add & pass’ along booklet which sometimes still comes up somewhere in the network. Back to the basics of mail-art with this paper version, but Also the TAM-bulletin can sometimes be found on INTERNET
  2. The beginning. With the growing number of contacts within this network I received a lot of information about other Mail- Art projects. At a certain moment I decided to make a bulletin with all the info’s on it. This was because a lot of people out in the network asked about information. The first bulletin was numbered 1984.5 . So in May 1985 this first TAM-bulletin was born.
  3. How it grew. The first TAM-bulletins were only one page and had a circulation of about 40. Since the number of contact I had in the network these amounts became bigger and bigger. The later issues came up to 14 pages and the biggest circulation of 400 copies. There were special sections in the bulletin with ‘News from the TAM-front’ and sometimes I used the bulletin to document my projects. In the period that I issued the ‘paper’ TAM-bulletins I sent out about 3.300 of those bulletins. There were 27 different editions. In 1986 and 1987 only one TAM- bulletin was put out. This was because I started with a computerized version of this bulletin. In 1987 the bulletin really got computerized. More about that will come later.

     

  4. Statistics. To give you an idea about how this TAM-bulletin grew in the beginning-year, here are some statistical details about all the ‘paper’ issues of the bulletin: