Exciting to see this invitation to attend and present at Zine Archives Montreal 2025 from Louis Rastelli, Programming Coordinator (archives@arcmtl.org).

On Our Shelves, On Our Terms
Zine Archives Montreal 2025
November 12–14, 2025
Part of the Expozine International Independent Publishing Festival and Fair, November 11-16
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

INVITATION / Call for proposals (deadline Sept. 30)

The ARCMTL archive centre and Expozine are happy to inform you of the upcoming conference on zine archives and libraries, Zine Archives Montreal 2025, with this year’s theme: On Our Shelves, On Our Terms.

The conference will take place during the week of Expozine 2025, from November 11 to 16, when all of Montreal is abuzz with zine energy ahead of the Expozine fair, North America’s largest zine and small press fair with over 240 participating publishers and self-publishing artists and writers.

Activities will include visits to several archive centres and libraries with zine collections in Montreal on November 12, and two days of presentations, discussions and activities on November 13 and 14. Special guests from varied zine archives and libraries from outside Montreal, along with local actors will discuss issues and challenges related to this very specialized field.

All programming will be free and open to the general public, whose interest in zines in general has been growing in recent years. The programming team would also be delighted to hear your suggestions, ideas and proposals for activities, visits to institutions, topics or ideas for themes for discussion, round tables or workshops. We also invite participants to prepare a short video of their own zine library or archive, which will be shown during the conference.

Preliminary programming will feature topics such as:

• On Our Terms – categories, metadata and description for zine collections;
• On Our Shelves – challenges around physical shelving and organizing zines of varied shapes, sizes and formats;
• On The Take – a look at acquisition policies and strategies;
• On Loan – challenges posed by managing loans and zine lending libraries;
• On The Platform – making zines available online while respecting copyrights, and without letting AI models ingest them.

Please email us with any further ideas, proposals or questions before September 30, 2025, and feel free to forward this message to other potential partners and guests that may be interested in taking part.

Detailed programming will be announced publicly by October 15, 2025.

Lastly, NOTE that ARCMTL can assist with funding requests for travel to Montreal, for example, by providing an official letter of invitation.

Are you an archivist who makes zines? Does your repository or library have a zine? SAA (the Society of American Archivists) will have a zine table at their annual conference in Anaheim in August 2025 and they’re inviting attendees to bring 10–15 copies of their zine to hand out.

See the call for zine donations at the SAA website.

July is International Zine Month! Back in 2009, zinester Alex Wrekk started International Zine Month, and we’ve all joined in since then. Thanks to Alex for creating this gorgeous poster giving us something to celebrate each day of #IZM2025. Note that July 21st is Zine Library Day—the traditional way to celebrate is visiting your favorite in person or online zine collection (and bringing a delicious treat to your favorite zine librarian!).

I enjoyed reading about the “Zine Zone” at the New Jersey Library Association conference in May. Librarians at NJLA set up a space for attendees to learn what zines are, read zines, and get ideas on how to incorporate zines and zine-making into your own library programming. They also made a collaborative conference zine. Turns out they’ve got an NJLA Zine Zone Instagram account, too!

If you’re passionate about zines in libraries, consider following the example of the NJLA Zine Zone and the Zine Pavilion to create a space at library events to connect with other zine folks and share info.