Yet another “zines are back, baby!” headline, this time from news/opinion site Salon. ;)Â Despite that, it’s a decent article, featuring the Arlington Public Library’s “Quaranzine” and the use of the hashtag #quaranzine on social media. Check out the article: Self-published zines are back as artists respond to our reality in quarantine by Ashlie D. Stevens.
International Zine Library Day 2020, held on July 21, was a great success! If you missed any of the content (there was a lot!), you can find notes from each of the sessions, as well as video recordings of many sessions, here: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/izld-2020-online-event-notes-and-recordings. Congratulations to the organizers for such a fun-filled event!
Check back for more information about the Zine Librarians unConference, to be held later in 2020.
The Bibliographical Society of America hosted a webinar on July 28 about DIY Publishing. Miarosa Ciallella, a zinester and library worker, talks about zines as activism and zines as a way to resist technocracy. Ciallella talks about how we know that social media is oppressive and how zines are “micro-archives that reflect and reject dominant narratives of historical moments.” Ciallella argues that we should start mentally investing in DIY print culture as a way to document history. (The other half of the presentation, about real estate flyers from Real Estate Trailblazers, is also interesting, though not as relevant to this site!)
Find the full description of this presentation at: memberplanet.com/events/bsa/contemp-collecting-diy and the recording at youtube.com/watch?v=BqxLE0zh5Xo.
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!)