Podcast episode on zines in libraries

Posted on November 8, 2019 by Violet

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.

Sharing zine cataloging procedures

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Violet

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’s new online catalog

Posted on October 14, 2019 by Violet

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.

Become a Zine Pavilion organizer

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Violet

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. 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.

Give us your feedback!

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Erin Elzi

We’re looking to improve the user experience of zinelibraries.info and would love to hear how the site can work better for your zine library needs!

Fill out this form to let us know your thoughts.

*we’ll continue to take feedback long after this is originally posted. As long as you can find this post, the feedback process is still active.

Visit to Athens Zine Bibliotheque

Posted on September 1, 2019 by Violet

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!)

Save the date: ZLuC 2020 in Montréal!

Posted on August 16, 2019 by Violet

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.

Save the date: ZLuC in Olympia!

Posted on July 28, 2019 by Violet

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!

Interview with the Queer Zine Archive Project

Posted on July 26, 2019 by Violet

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.

Zinester Rights & Permissions Bingo

Posted on July 22, 2019 by Milo

At last weekend’s ZL(u)C we played Zinester Rights And Permissions Bingo based on Jenna’s list with much laughter good cheer. If you would like to download the cards (30) for playing at your own institution, a PDF is available here. These are intended to be printed on Tabloid (11×17″) but would probably fit on A3 also.