Zine librarian and librarian Gina Murrell wrote a story for Library Journal called Libraries Collect COVID-19 Stories in Quaranzines on June 1st. She talks about how zines have allowed creators to process the difficult thoughts and emotions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Find the article at libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=Libraries-Collect-COVID-19-Stories-Quaranzines.
This year’s Zine Librarians unConference, ZLuC 2020, in Montréal has been cancelled due to COVID-19. But zine librarians from around the world are working on a virtual version of the event! http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/ If you’re interested in attending, stay tuned. If you’re interested in helping organize this event, please get in touch! In the meantime, join us on July 21 for a special event, being decided by ZLuC organizers right now!
This From Indie to Institution article in The Harvard Crimson by Elyse D. Pham describes the differing environments of the zine collections of the Papercut Zine Library and Harvard’s Schlesinger Library. Though the institutions are less than a mile apart in Cambridge, Massachusetts, their differing focus is clear, with preservation and research access being key at Schlesinger while Papercut establishes a more reader-friendly vibe. The article is a short but excellent description of the wide range of what a zine library can be!
“On the Zine Scene” is a new American Libraries article written by Diana Panuncial discussing how libraries have partnered with zinesters to bring zine fests to life. Libraries discussed include the Milwaukee Public Library, Hennepin County Library, Chattanooga Public Library, and San Antonio Public Library.
The team working on the Zine Union Catalog has been busy! Check out these recent blog posts to keep up with their work: Data Cleaning in OpenRefine, Ingestion, and Bibliography.
CMLE (the Central Minnesota Library Exchange) is a regional multitype library system which supports collaboration between public, academic, school, and special libraries. Their Reading with Libraries podcast explores a specific genre each episode and features guest hosts who help give recommendations for great reading materials.
Episode 409 focuses on zines and features long-time zine librarian Violet Fox (me!). During the show we discuss zinelibraries.info, the Zine Librarians unConference, and the Zine Pavilion, as well as some recent young adult and middle grade fiction that includes zine making as a significant part of the storyline.
The Franklin & Marshall College Library in Lancaster, Pennsylvania has a zine collection of a few hundred titles. In October, librarians Anna Boutin-Cooper and E Marcovitz gave a presentation at the ArLiSNAP virtual conference titled One Summer, Two People, & a Zine Backlog: a How-To for New Catalogers. (The presentation was recorded and should be available this month, I’ll update this post when it’s available.)
Their library has a zine collection of a few hundred titles, check out their LibGuide at library.fandm.edu/zinelibrary for more information about its scope. The presenters were also kind enough to share their library’s zine cataloging procedures for their WMS catalog, which have been added to our Zine Cataloging resource page.
If you have zine library related procedures or policies that you’d like to share, please get in touch, we’d be glad to link to them or host them on this site to help other library folks!
Queer Zine Library, a London-based roaming DIY queer zine library, announced their new online catalog which describes about 25% of their collection of over 400 zines. They’re using LibraryThing to catalog their zines, with LibraryThing’s TinyCat as a front end to enable advanced searching on the collection.
Volunteer catalogers at the Queer Zine Library shared their thoughts and experiences in a blog post that’s well worth reading. They’ve also published their cataloging manual online which gives guidelines for choices made in cataloging zines.
The Zine Pavilion is a four-day celebration of zines in the midst of the American Library Association annual conference, which provides librarians from across the world the opportunity to talk with zinesters and learn more about getting zines into their libraries.
The organizers of the Zine Pavilion are library folks from the U.S. and Canada who once a year come together to make this magic happen for this using decoration as party table linen which are perfect for this event. We’re looking for people who would like to help become part of the team to help plan the ninth Zine Pavilion, in Chicago from June 26-29, 2020.
Responsibilities of being a Zine Pavilion organizers include (approximately) monthly phone meetings and being willing to volunteer for tasks, which can include: arranging events, contacting zinesters, staffing the Zine Pavilion during the ALA conference, or other tasks. If you’d like to be a part of the fun, please fill out this form to indicate your interest or ask any questions: https://tinyurl.com/ZinePavilionOrganizerSignup.
On August 29, after the closing session of the 2019 IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) conference in Athens, Greece, I visited the Athens Zine Bibliotheque. A project by architect Panayiota Theofilatou and graphic designer Tassos Papaioannou, the library was founded in November 2014 and contains more than 300 zines from around the world.
Subject strengths of the collection include photography, art, illustration, design, architecture, and literature/poetry. Theofilatou and Papaioannou have traveled with zines from the collection around Greece and to neighboring countries, and have contributed to exhibitions of photo zines.
If you’d like your zine to be a part of the Athens Zine Bibliotheque, send it via airmail to:
Athens Zine Bibliotheque
attn: Panayiota Theofilatou & Tassos Papaioannou
26 Kariatidon str.
174 55 Alimos, Greece
(Please note that their physical address is different than their mailing address!)
The 2020 Zine Librarians unConference will be held August 21 & 22, 2020 in Montréal, Québec, Canada. This’ll be the first time ZLuC will be in Canada!!
If you would like to help be a part of making ZLuC happen (whether you’re in the Montréal area or not), get in touch with Christine via the Zine Librarians Yahoo email list.
Delighted to report that there will be another Zine Librarians unConference in 2019: planning has started for an event on Monday October 28, at the Olympia Timberland Library in Olympia, Washington. This unconference will opportunistically follow this year’s Olympia Zine Fest, which is taking place October 25-27.
A wiki has been started: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc-olympia/
Contact Kelsey via the Zine Librarians Yahoo email list if you’d like to help organize ZLuC 2019 in Olympia!
Chicago librarian Alenka Figa has started a new series on online journal Women Write About Comics which “will explore how librarians use zines in both public and academic institutions, and how these organizations serve marginalized communities.” First up in the series: Our Queer Older Siblings Will Guide Us: An Interview with the Queer Zine Archive Project. Alenka talks with QZAP co-founder Milo Miller about the the archive’s beginnings, the historical canon of queer zines, and challenges faced in digitizing zines and maintaining the archive.