Excited to hear about the new Zines Forever! DIY Publications and Disability Justice exhibit at the Wellcome Collection in London. The display draws on some of the 1,300 zines at the Wellcome and “explores how the making and sharing of zines can further disability activism and political resistance and serve as a vehicle for community building and mutual support.”
There’s a new guest editorial in the March 2025 issue of College & Research Libraries, “The Role of Academic Libraries in the Shifting Landscape of Zines” by Evan Bobrow. Bobrow writes about several topics important in zine librarianship: the fuzzy definitions of zines, what it means to create a printed zine in the age of the Internet and social media, the authority conferred on zines by including them in a library collection, and how seeing zines (especially scrappy, less-polished zines) can inspire people to create their own. The editorial ends with this lovely thought:
“There is a magic to holding a zine in your hands, only to be suddenly struck with inspiration to create. Zine libraries have the opportunity to bring this experience to all who visit, and therein lies their power.”
A nice article from the Carleton College student newspaper, “Special Collections and Art History Department host ‘Library on Legs’ event,” written by Clare O’Connor. The article describes a “Library on Legs” event hosted by Gould Library’s Special Collections and the Department of Art and Art History, along with a library display and a zinemaking workshop from a local artist.
Excited to stumble upon the website Tiny Zine Swap Shop, which is designed to help library workers introduce zinemaking to young people. Created by Scottish library worker Fi Johnston, the Tiny Zine Swap Shop has resources focused on the joy of making one-page zines, including a template, workshop, brief histories of zines, inspiration ideas, ideas for curriculum, and more.
See Fi give a presentation about the site at Tiny Zine Swap Shop titled “The Benefits of Zinemaking on Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing.” That presentation was part of a June 2024 “Zine Webinar Morning” sponsored by the Academic and Research Libraries Group Scotland, which includes presentations such as:
The video is a great way to see what’s happening in the Scottish zine librarian scene!
Swiss librarian Guillaume Pasquier’s blog, Biblog, is subtitled “a digital librarian’s notebook” and features interesting stories about libraries and books. A recent post, Dans les magasins, des mag-… euh, des fanzines, shares his discovery of ” the richness of the fanzine universe.” Guillaume invites librarians in the Geneva area to a January 2025 group visit to the Geneva fanzine library (La fanzinothèque genevoise). I hope there will be a followup post with highlights from the tour!
Really enjoyed “Transformative Collections,” a news story about a collaboration between students/faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago and incarcerated women at the Cook County Department of Corrections. The UIC Library had an integral part in supporting the RESTORE zine, part of the Rehabilitation and Engagement Supporting Therapeutic Outcomes of Renewal and Empowerment project.
If you’re a zinester or a librarian, consider taking this interesting new survey: Imagining Relationships Between Zine Creators and Zine Librarians. It’s part of a research project by Al Cassada at the University of Alabama considering the best ways for zine librarians to build relationships with zine creators. Participants from non-U.S. areas are welcome to take the survey; however, it’s only available in English. The survey takes about 15 minutes and will be open until November 1st. I’m looking forward to seeing the results!
One of our zine librarian colleagues from England, Lilith Cooper. has shared their recently published PhD thesis titled The zINe-Between: A Creative Practice Exploration of Health, Liminality, Lived Experience and the Zines in Wellcome Collection. The abstract describes its scope:
Wellcome Collection, a museum and library in London, UK, has intentionally collected zines around health, medicine and the human condition since 2016. The outcome of a Collaborative Doctoral Award with Wellcome Collection, this creative practice thesis explores some of these 1000+ zines, alongside selected zines outside the collection, grouped around three themes: zines made in, from or about beds; zines which involve becoming disabled; and zines created during the COVID-19 pandemic. This exploration moves between physical and digital zines, feeling out both their distinct qualities and the space between them as a route into contemporary zine (re)production, cultures and communities.
This project is composed of two interwoven parts: a collection of original zines created over its duration and an accompanying critical thesis. Through a creative methodology which brings together zine making, autoethnographic and phenomenological approaches to zines, and semi-structured interviews with librarians at Wellcome, I argue that the concept of liminality offers a productive framework for examining material, cultural and political aspects of contemporary zines’ content, production and communities of practice. In turn, the thesis contributes to a reconceptualisation of liminality, beyond the carefully managed processes of transition described in ethnographic accounts, as ongoing, affective, embodied, messy, and non-linear.
Both drawing on and extending interdisciplinary theories of liminality, the thesis focuses on zines made from and about spaces (sickbeds), experiences (becoming disabled) and times (the COVID-19 pandemic) that are in-between, transitional, or transformative. Whilst narrative approaches and approaches that prioritise the usefulness of lived experience to medicine, research or policy often treat liminality as a period of chaos, nonsense or absence, these zines made of and from the in-between offer insight into these periods of liminality in experiences of health, illness and disability. They hold space for the episodic, fragmented and non-linear, engage in affective sense-making, (re)produce third-space knowledges and prioritise the uses of lived experience for peers.
Within the original set of zines created alongside this thesis are zines which directly addresses the concerns of chapters, zines which involve and document wider practices of reproduction, distribution, and collection, as well as those which challenge or disrupt conventions of academic research. Zine making, as a practice-based research method, offers a generative approach to both an archival collection which is proximal, intimate, living, and liminal, and to archival objects which are visual-material-textual, records of practices and processes, and traces of communities of practice as much as products. Produced from the liminal positionality of doctoral research, these zines echo the ways that the zines in Wellcome Collection document and inhabit liminal experiences, spaces and times.
I loved the article “Dreams of Zines” by librarian/archivist Sophie Ziegler in the Louisiana-focused magazine 64 Parishes. They quote Louisiana State University student Adrienne Lewis: “When I visit a new place, I always try to find where the zines are. Every time I find zines, I find my people.”
The second half of the article discusses zine collections in archives and special collections around Louisiana and highlights library outreach efforts oriented around zines. Well worth a read!
The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has a new zine collection, as announced in the article Kraemer Family Library Launches Zine Collection. The collection resulted from a project by UCCS librarian Liz Brown through the Radical Librarian Institute, organized by the California Rare Book School. The Radical Librarian Institute also funded $250 grants to student zinesters from diverse backgrounds (read about that in the announcement The Kraemer Family Library is Building a Zine Collection and We Want You!).
The UCCS student newspaper also wrote about the new zine collection in the article “Library Zine Collection Brings UCCS Student’s Passions and Creativity to the Forefront” by Livi Davis.
A seven-week zine-making course was recently offered at the Braille Institute in Los Angeles as part of the programming of their library. A Radical Librarianship Institute project designed the course for blind adult and youth students. Read all about it in the Summer 2024 issue of Scene, newsletter of the Braille Institute.
Our friend and zine scholar Kiyoshi Murakami recently gave a presentation on how important the local aspect of zine culture can be. You can see his presentation notes online: Zine Culture and Locality/Regionality: The Significance of Practices Derived from That Relationship (consider using DeepL for a more accurate translation). Murakami describes the significance of small local publishers to cultural formation in local communities. He also talks about the usefulness of zine events like workshops or zine fests, and recommends zine archiving as a valuable practice, suggesting that zine libraries might best be created in partnership with public libraries, public museums, and community centers.
The Read/Write Library in Chicago has a pop-up exhibit happening now through July 21st at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. After being closed for three years, it’s great to see the library back in action! The Read/Write Library collects books, comics, journals, newspapers, and zines published by those in the Chicago area.
The pop-up also included an abridged history of the library written by founder and executive director Nell Taylor.
July is International Zine Month!! IZM was created in 2009 by Alex Wrekk (Stolen Sharpie Revolution, Brainscan, etc.) to celebrate zines and zinesters. There’s a list of suggested activities at Alex’s website, Stolen Sharpie Revolution. Use hashtag #IZM2024 to share what you’re doing. Make a special note of Sunday July 21st, which is Zine Library Day! The traditional way to recognize Zine Library Day is by visiting a zine library and bringing them a tasty snack. Consider planning an event in your library!
The 2024 International Zine Month flyer was created by Alex Wrekk.
Love this image! It was created by Nina Zina of Echo Zines, a feminist zine distro.
image by Nina Zina of Echo Zines
June 9th marked the launch of the South Side Zine Library, located within the Richard J Daley Branch of the Chicago Public Library (3400 S Halsted St in Bridgeport). The new library is a partnership between Chicago Public Library, Quimby’s Bookstore, Zine Club Chicago. Founded by Cynthia Hanifin, the library got an excellent kickoff with readings, zine making, and a punk a capella performance.
