Excited for the publication of Public Librarians Discuss Zine Collections, a 44-page booklet published by Temporary Services. Created by Marc Fischer and Tim Devin, it features interviews with Tim Devin (Somerville Public Library). Angi Brzycki & Ziba Pérez (Los Angeles Public Library), Alicia Tate (Multnomah Public Library) and Alina Josan (Free Library of Philadelphia).
Your friend Violet Fox (author of this very post) nearly forgot to promote her own webinar on this very website! Please join me, Dez Alaniz, and Dawn Stahura, as well as moderator Sophie Ziegler (also a zinester!) for a free webinar titled Zinesters as Librarians, Librarians as Zinesters. We’ll be talking about how being a librarian influences our zine practices and how being a zinester influences our library practice. If you’re looking for a webinar that’s speaks to your very, very niche interests of zines + libraries, join us for a fun discussion!
Edit to add: the recording of the webinar is now available!
Thanks very much to Library Juice Connections for suggesting and hosting this webinar! They’ve been terrific to work with.
Looking forward to this free webinar, History of Zines (+ Free Speech), presented by Colin Wheeler and Pete Rorabaugh at Kansas State University. It’s on Wednesday September 2nd. The webinar is part of their Experts on DIY Publishing series, which goes through November and culminates in a zine party with attendees having the chance to learn about different aspects of DIY publishing by visiting various stations within a collaborative space in the library. Other webinars in the series include a Remixing the Book panel on September 30th and Teaching with Zines on October 14th.
Zine Scheme for STEM Library Engagement and Outreach, a paper by Denise Amanda Wetzel, Chasz Griego, Sara Kern, and Jacob E Gordon, was presented at the 2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition (the American Society of Engineering Education). The authors share information about zine history, making zines, and use cases both for libraries in general and for engineering students. The appendices include sample one-page zines from the authors’ institutions (Carnegie Mellon University and Pennsylvania State University), featuring info about wayfinding in libraries and pocket guides to resources for specific topics. If you’re looking for ways to use zines in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, this paper might be a good place to start.
A few panels from a 1-page zine from the Patent and Trademark Resource Center
Dollops for Donuts, a podcast about the music history of Denver, interviewed Kelly Shortandqueer about the origins and growth of the Denver Zine Library. The podcast episode is well worth a listen if you’re interested in how zine libraries get started and how they can sustain growth thoughtfully! There’s also discussion of ZineCat (the Zine Union Catalog) at the 55-minute mark.
The webinar “Have You Zine This?: Georgia State University Library’s Zine Initiative” was presented by Jennie Law, Charlene Martoni, & Anna Wodny earlier this month. You can view the webinar slides and recording at the Georgia Library Association’s Carterette Series site. Particularly helpful are the budgets that detail how much the library spent on initial setup for circulating and in-house zine-making kits. The presenters also share ideas for zine workshop themes and info about their zine analysis assignment, where they ask students to consider the visual elements, purpose, and audience of a zine in the GSU collections.
On Wednesday May 20th there’ll be a free workshop from two University of Washington MLIS Capstone students who have spent the last several months researching, planning, and facilitating zine workshops. Willow Maloney and fran wood will share their expertise in the webinar Cut, Paste, Create: Designing Memorable Zine Workshops. [Updated to add: the recording of the webinar is now available.]
“This webinar will also include access to a [Zine Workshop Toolkit], which contains information about successful facilitation and material considerations, as well as zine templates, examples, and links to events around Washington State. Participants are encouraged to bring their questions and share their own experiences with zine making or workshop facilitation.”
Save the date for the Zine Librarian’s unConference 2026 ONLINE Saturday, November 7th & Sunday, November 8th….more details to follow.
Zine Librarians unConference 2026 (online/virtual)
Volume 4, number 1 of Unbound: A Journal of Digital Scholarship is dedicated to zines, or, more precisely, made out of zines. Titled “Academizines!” and edited by Spencer D. C. Keralis and Zach Frazier, this special issue features contributors from across disciplines sharing their research and creative scholarship in zine form.
The whole issue is great, but these zines within the issue might be of special interest to zine librarians:
The Zine Pavilion will be back June 26-29, 2026, as a part of the American Library Association conference in Chicago! We’re looking for zine donations to show conference attendees/library workers what zines are all about. A wide range of topics is welcome—the only restriction is no hate speech.
At the end of the conference, the donated zines will be raffled off to several libraries so they can start or grow their own zine collections! Please email zinepavilion@gmail.com with any questions.
I loved reading through Zine Libraries, a new zine from Pratt MLIS students Jackson Galati, Marie Cantor, and Ava Lawler. Created as the final project for one of their classes, the zine includes tips and best practices for cataloging and info about some zine libraries and archives in New York City. It’s available to print out for free!
We are sad to report that the Zine Librarians unConference was attended by a non-zine librarian in bad faith. She recorded the event without permission and posted her recordings. Please read the organizers’ statement about the violation.
This weekend, November 8 & 9 (in many time zones), is the something annual Zine Librarians unConference, which is fully online this year! https://www.zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2025
Registration is closed for this year. Stay tuned for info about ZLuC 2026, which we expect to be a combination of online with regional meetups. We wish we could all be in person, but traveling these days is more fraught than ever. ????
The Zine Pavilion organizers recently commissioned five zinesters to design postcards celebrating zines and the Zine Pavilion. Our artists, Pamela Acosta, Charlotte Fleming, Elliott Junkyard, Jay McQuirns, and Cypress Wilde, were all exhibitors at the 2025 Zine Pavilion. We’re so excited with what they came up with!!
You can purchase a set of five postcards, including shipping & handling, for $15 per set. All proceeds will go towards funding the BIPOC Travel Grant for the next in-person Zine Librarians UnConference.
The ZLuC 2026 location committee decided that we need to recognize that many in our community likely have anxiety around travel in the current political climate in the US.