International Zine Library Day 2023

Did you know July is International Zine Month? And that there’s a special day of the year designated for celebrating zine libraries?? In 2023, Zine Library Day is Saturday July 22nd: make plans to have a fun event or just enjoy the traditional vegan donut (or treat of your choice!).

IZM2023Poster

Thanks to Alex Wrekk for maintaining International Zine Month and to Mr. Chompy from Zineville for this year’s idea-packed flyer!

DIY Archiving Practice at 56a Infoshop

From zine scholar Kiyoshi Murakami in Japan comes a series of posts titled “Zines, Archiving, and Activism—the Horizons Opened up by Their Interlocking Developments” published in the webzine AMeeT (Art Meets Technology). Part 2 and 3 of a 4-part series, “DIY Archiving Practice at 56a Infoshop,” describes 56a Infoshop, the London DIY social center.

If you don’t read Japanese, Kiyoshi suggests using DeepL Translator for a translation.

screenshot from article featuring the full shelves of London's 56a Infoshop and the sentence "In each room, bookshelves that reach to the ceiling are installed along all walls, and materials are packed into them without gaps."

Zine Pavilion 2023 details

The Zine Pavilion will be back at the American Library Association (ALA) conference in Chicago from June 23-26, 2023. If you’re attending the ALA conference, please be sure to stop by the Zine Pavilion to see hundreds of zines on display, enter our raffle to potentially win zines for your library, or talk with the dozens of zinesters who will be selling their zines!

Find the Zine Pavilion on the exhibit hall floor (also called the “Library Marketplace”). We‘ll be located at booth number 2444 (towards the back of the hall); see this interactive map of the exhibit hall. We have the same hours as the exhibit hall.

Event schedule (all events held at the Zine Pavilion unless otherwise noted):

ALA 2023 Chicago Collaborative Zine (Friday through Sunday)
Create a page for the annual ALA Conference zine! A table with supplies to express your conference feels, ideas, or anything that strikes your fancy will be set up at the Zine Pavilion. Return between noon and 2 pm on Monday to get your own copy of the final zine. The collaborative zine will also be posted on the Zine Pavilion Tumblr after the event.

Zine Swap (Friday 5:30-7 pm)
Bring a few copies of your zine to swap and share with other zine creators. Can’t make it the first evening? Don’t worry! An area to swap and share zines will remain up on the Zine Pavilion information table throughout the weekend.

Queer Zinester Meet-up (Friday 8:30pm)
Get to know other queer zinesters at an off-site meet-up with light refreshments. Non-alcoholic beverages will be available but you are welcome to bring some of your own!

Zines?? Students as Knowledge Creators (Saturday 11 am-noon)
Can zines be an acceptable form of a college student’s final project rather than a final research paper in higher education? YES! Community College Librarian and Professor of Information Literacy, Rosa Bernal, presents how she teaches her Information Studies course so students can be knowledge creators in the form of a zine. While students become experts in their chosen topics and experience making a zine in Canva, they also learn information literacy skills using the ACRL (Academic College and Research Libraries) Information Literacy framework and effectively using traditional and electronic library resources. Students also become acquainted with the history of zines, zine making, and their D.I.Y. purpose and see themselves as legitimate self-publishers by the end of the course.

Incarcerated People as Zinesters Panel (Saturday 1-2:30 pm)
Listen to a discussion about the Anthony Rayson Zine Collection and the place of zines by incarcerated people outside of libraries/archives between Anthony Rayson (South Chicago ABC Zine Distro), Derek Potts (DePaul University Special Collections), Rachel Jones (Interference Archive), Ai Miller (Strange Deer Press), Jeremy Hammond (Midwest Books to Prisoners) and Andrea Kszystyniak (Omaha Zine Fest Co-Founder and Organizer). There will be free zines selected from the Anthony Rayson Collection to take with you!

Zines from Creation to the Stacks (Sunday 10-11 am)
Zine cataloging can be interesting, intimidating, and puzzling all at the same time. Join a small group discussion at the Zine Pavilion to share tips and tricks for describing DIY publications which can defy traditional standards. Zine cataloger Violet Fox and zinester and artist Kee Merriweather will be discussing the intricacies of zine cataloging from the perspective of a librarian and a zine creator.

Zines! Let Creativity Flow in Your School Library: No Grading Allowed (Sunday 1-2 pm)
In this workshop facilitated by Lisa Bishop, the goal is to unleash creativity in your school library and collaborate differently with your teaching colleagues. Learn the how-tos of making zines with your students in the school library and find zine festivals to exhibit and promote your students’ art, words, ideas and teach them to sell, barter, and more.

Call Number podcast about zines in libraries

Episode 84 of Call Number, the American Libraries podcast, is focused on Chicago treasures in preparation of the upcoming 2023 American Library Association conference (June 22-27). Podcast host Diana Panuncial talks with Liz Mason, manager of Quimby’s Bookstore, a longstanding Chicago institution specializing in independent and small press books, comics, and zines. They discuss the city’s zine scene and how librarians can incorporate these publications into their collections and programming. The zine discussion starts at the 20:45 mark.

Zines, Archiving, and Activism

From our friend and zine scholar Kiyoshi Murakami in Japan comes a new series of posts titled “Zines, Archiving, and Activism—the Horizons Opened up by Their Interlocking Developments” published in the webzine AMeeT (Art Meets Technology). Part 1 of 4, “Essential Issues in Collection, Preservation, and Disclosure,” was published on May 10th discussing the tension of DIY publications being collected and processed by formal institutions (such as university archives). If you don’t read Japanese, Kiyoshi suggests using the DeepL Translator for a translation. I’ll post the other parts here when they’re published!photo of zines neatly organized in labeled boxes on a shelf.

ZLuC 2023 registration now open

Interested in joining zinesters & library/archives workers from across the U.S. and beyond to talk about zine librarianship? Registration is now open for the 2023 Zine Librarians unConference, happening August 4-5 in San Francisco. Registration is free and capped at 100 in-person attendees; virtual options will be available.

Find more information and a registration link at the ZLuC 2023 page.

flyer with photo of the Golden Gate bridge and an announcement that the 2023 Zine Librarian unConference will be held in San Francisco

Interview with zine librarian Rhonda Kauffman

Graham Stinnett, Archivist at the University of Connecticut Library, recently published the 49th episode of the podcast d’Archive. This 47-minute episode, titled “Liberated Zine Zone,” (archive) features an interview with metadata librarian Rhonda Kauffman. Rhonda talks about their first forays into creating zines and the zine collection (1994-2019) she donated to the UConn archives & special collections in 2019.

colorful logo for the D'Archive podcast

ZLuC 2023 BIPOC travel grant

Every year, the zine librarian community gathers at the Zine Librarians unConference, which will be held this year in San Francisco on August 4th and 5th. And every year, the community crowdfunds money for travel grants for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to attend ZLuC. If you’re a BIPOC library worker or zinester interested in attending ZLuC, please fill out our travel grant application. Previous awards have ranged from around $250 to around $750. The number of recipients and the amount distributed depends on how many donations received—if you’d like to contribute to the ZLuC BIPOC travel grant fund, send money via PayPal to julia.huddleston [at] gmail, or get in touch at that address to discuss other ways to donate.

flyer showing a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge and a wall of zines. Text reads "ZLuC BIPOC travel grant applications now open, apply by April 21"

New article for teachers and school librarians

Long-time zinester and zine librarian Cathy Camper has written a new article for School Library Journal introducing zines to teachers and school librarians, “Zines: Cut-and-Paste Publishing by and for the People.” Sidebars also written by Camper include “9 Books about Zines for Teens and Tweens,” “9 Tips for Zine-Making Workshops,” “A Brief History of Zines,” and “Online Zine Resources from A to Z.” Delightful cut-and-paste style illustrations by Mark Todd accompany the cover story.

colorful, cut and paste style illustration on the cover of School Library Journal's March 2023 issue

ZLuC 2023: save the date

The Zine Librarians unConference will be held in person this year! This year’s ZLuC will be held in San Francisco, California on Friday August 4 and Saturday August 5. There may be additional events (like tours of zine stores/zine libraries or a zinester reading) held on Sunday August 6, too, so consider keeping your schedule free that day as well.

ZLuC 2023 Registration is now open! We are capping in-person to 100 attendees. In addition, we will be exploring virtual options, for at least one of the days.
You can register here: https://forms.gle/SM7SQrXCv5Bx3EU5A. Registration is free and the due date for registration is July 10th.
You’ll be able to find all the info about ZLuC 2023 as it’s announced at this landing page: zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc-2023-san-francisco.

If you’d like to support the travel needs of one or more zine librarians to attend ZLuC, please consider donating to the ZLuC BIPOC Travel Grant. The travel grant is a no-strings attached yearly tradition that has allowed several zine librarians of color to attend ZLuC without worrying about finances. Send donations via Paypal to juliahuddleston [at] gmail [dot] com (specify “ZLuC Travel Grant” in the comments). If you’d prefer to contribute without using Paypal, please email that address to coordinate an alternate method of payment. Thanks for considering!

flyer with photo of the Golden Gate bridge and an announcement that the 2023 Zine Librarian unConference will be held in San Francisco

Zine Libraries and Collections online panel

This event was originally scheduled for October 2022 but was rescheduled due to a strike.

Spineless Wonders is a network of artists, writers, academics and librarians, creating and researching small press publications including artists books, based in the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London (UCL). On Friday February 10, they’ll be hosting an all-day event titled Spineless Wonders: The Zine, Type And Script, consisting of in-person and virtual sessions. An online panel discussion titled “Zines: In/Out: The Institutional Dilemma: Zine Libraries and Collections” will happen at 1:30 pm London time:

As institutions, libraries and archives follow sets of rules for access, development, and description of their collections. Increasingly, libraries and archives are collecting zines – do-it-yourself, short-run publications created and distributed outside mainstream channels. This panel is made up of library and archive workers who have developed and organised zine collections in a range of institutions. The session will have four short presentations followed by discussion and will consider the ethics, challenges, and joys of zines in library and archive settings.

The chair is Kirsty Fife (researcher into digital information and curating, Manchester Metropolitan University) and speakers will be Holly Casio (Queer Zine Library), Kyle Gibbens (Queer Zine Library), Nicola Cook (Wellcome Library), and Tavian Hunter (Stuart Hall Library at Iniva). There will also be an online tour of the Manchester Poetry Library.

Zine Librarians Code of Ethics second edition

The Zine Librarians Code of Ethics (ZLCoE) was drafted in 2014/2015 and published in print form in November 2015. It was the labor of love of an informal group of library & archives workers who wanted to share their knowledge of the zine community’s norms and how they saw those intersecting with libraries and archives practices.

The zine librarian community has been talking about updating the ZLCoE for a while now; let’s make it happen! Please join me over Zoom for an informal session discussing what should be updated and how we’ll make it happen. If you haven’t read the Code of Ethics recently, it’d be great if you could do so before the meeting so we can talk about what we like and what we’d like to add or revise.

Meeting details: Zoom/virtual meeting. Friday November 11 (2 pm eastern, 1 pm Central, noon Mountain, 11 am Pacific). Registration required.

Can’t make the meeting? Here’s a quick form to fill out for your thoughts about what we should add or change in the next edition, and to add your email address if you’d like to be involved in the second edition in some way.

Zine Libraries and Collections online panel

screenshot of Zines event on October 21st at University College London, featuring a photo illustration of the stapled spines of zinesSpineless Wonders is a network of artists, writers, academics and librarians, creating and researching small press publications including artists books, based in the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London (UCL). On Friday October 21, they’ll be hosting an all-day event titled Zines: Reading, Preserving, Making, consisting of in-person and virtual sessions. An online panel discussion titled “Zines: In/Out: The Institutional Dilemma: Zine Libraries and Collections” will happen at 11:45 am London time:

As institutions, libraries and archives follow sets of rules for access, development, and description of their collections. Increasingly, libraries and archives are collecting zines – do-it-yourself, short-run publications created and distributed outside mainstream channels. This panel is made up of library and archive workers who have developed and organised zine collections in a range of institutions. The session will have four short presentations followed by discussion and will consider the ethics, challenges, and joys of zines in library and archive settings.

The chair is Kirsty Fife (researcher into digital information and curating, MMU) and speakers will be Holly Casio (Queer Zine Library), Kyle Gibbens (Queer Zine Library), Nicola Cook (Wellcome Library), and Tavian Hunter (Stuart Hall Library at Iniva). There will also be an online tour of the Manchester Poetry Library and Gloria Kiconco’s exhibition ‘Queering the Form’.