The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry was founded in 1979 in Miami Beach, Florida. With over 75,000 items including books, periodicals, typewritings, drawings, letters, print portfolios, ephemera, artists’ books, and manuscripts, the Archive is believed to be the largest collection of its kind in the world. The majority of the collection was donated to the University of Iowa Libraries beginning in 2019 as a gift of Ruth and Marvin A. Sackner... and the Sackner Family Partnership.

Processing of the Sackner Archive is ongoing. Those manuscripts, art works, and ephemeral items that have been fully processed may be found here in ArchivesSpace. Books, journals, and other publications that have been processed may be searched in the Libraries’ Infohawk+ database (https://search.lib.uiowa.edu/primo-explore/search?vid=01IOWA). (Searches may be limited to items in the Sackner Archive by using the pulldown “Collections” menu on the left of the screen.)

In most cases, it will not be possible to provide access to items that are not yet processed. If an item that has been cited in publications (such as the various printed catalogs of the Sackner Archive) is not found in ArchivesSpace or InfoHawk+, it may be in the unprocessed portion of the collection, or it may have been sold or donated to another institution prior the Archive’s acquisition by the University of Iowa.