The Zine Librarians unConference (ZLuC) is a safer space, which means that it is intended to be a welcoming, engaging, and supportive environment free of oppressive actions, behaviors, and language. Participants are asked to consider how their language and behavior impacts others in attendance.

Harassing or abusive language or behavior will not be tolerated at ZLuC, including:

• racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and all other forms of discrimination
• sexual harassment, stalking, or intimidation
• inappropriate physical contact
• disruptive or disrespectful behavior
• action or language that makes other participants feel unwelcome or unsafe

Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

Should an issue arise with a participant before the event, ZLuC organizers will listen to concerns and find a solution that is in the best interests of the community and the event being a safer space. ZLuC organizers reserve the right to limit attendance to the event for any reason.

Should an issue arise with a participant during the fest, ZLuC organizers will be available to mediate on-site and attempt to find a solution. ZLuC organizers reserve the right to ask any participants who are violating the safer space policy to change or address their unsafe behavior or language, or to leave the event. If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please notify one of the ZLuC organizers immediately.

We expect participants to follow these rules at all ZLuC event venues, including social events.

We looked into the dorms at USF but unfortunately they were not available to be booked for this event. We’re sorry about that, but we did try!

Lodging in the Bay Area can be a little more on the pricey side compared to other cities in the United States so we want attendees to know that:

• Both ZLuC locations are easy to get to via public transportation
• We do not endorse hotels 🙂 just offering as potential options on this list

Hotels Close to USF/SFPL

The majority of hotels in San Francisco are downtown and closer to SFPL. Hotels near USF are few and far between, since the university is in a residential area close to Golden Gate Park. ZLuC attendees looking to book a hotel might consider these options:

• Stanyan Park Hotel
• Geary Parkway Motel
• Hotel Kabuki
• Courtyard by Marriott San Francisco Downtown/Van Ness Ave.
• Phoenix Hotel

You can also look at hotels through websites like Kayak, Booking.com, or Expedia to compare prices of hotels.

Other Lodging Options

Lombard street has a number of motels that may be a little further from the venue but a little more economical. If you select a motel on Lombard between Fillmore and Van Ness you will be a short walk from a single bus ride to either venue.

There are a number of hostels in San Francisco and this travel blog has compiled a list.

Folks might have better luck looking at AirBnb or Vrbo and look in adjacent cities like Oakland, Berkeley, or Daly City. The Bay Area has public transportation that can get you to both ZLuC sites.

Transportation & Parking

• Getting to USF: USF is easily accessible via public transit. And we’re also providing free parking in the Koret Parking Lot for the day! USF Campus & Parking Map.
• Getting to SFPL: SFPL is easily accessible via public transit. There are paid parking garages near the SFPL.

Clipper Card

To ride public transportation, you will want to get the Clipper Card which you can buy at a machine in MUNI/BART stations or you can also download the app onto your phone.

The 2023 Zine Librarian unConference (ZLuC) will be held in San Francisco!

What: ZLuC is an inspirational, informative, and fun gathering of people who care deeply about zines and their ability to change lives for the better.

Where: the University of San Francisco and San Francisco Public Library (plus field trips hopefully to the East Bay!)

When: Friday August 4 and Saturday August 5, 2023. Additional events (such as tours or zine readings) may be held on Sunday August 6.

Who: Everyone is welcome! The primary audience is workers and volunteers from academic, public, and special libraries, as well as community-oriented independent libraries and archives. If you’re interested in zines in libraries and archives, we’re happy to have you join in the fun.

Why: To share the zine love!

How much: Registration for the conference is free.

Registration: Registration is now CLOSED! The last day to register was July 10, 2023. We have hit our 100 in-person limit but you can still register for the online portion or be wait-listed for in-person.

• Help us decide on topics for ZLuC 2023
• Sign up for Sunday, August 6 East Bay activities

Resources

[RM_Form id=’5′]

This page has resources from the Teaching With Zines session.

Before our session, we invite you to take 5 or 10 minutes to reflect on the following questions. (You can also download and print a zineier version here.)

So you wanna teach with zines! That’s great. Here are some questions to help you think through a zine activity, whether it is a standalone thang or part of a longer-term course or series. You might answer all of these questions, or just a few. 

• What do you want people to learn? This could be a specific skill, some information, or even a set of feelings.
• How do you see zines fitting into that? For example, as content (they’re legit learning about zines as zines), as a container for content (they’re learning about cooking by reading zines), or as a container for sharing what they’ve learned (making a zine about science they’ve learned), or something else altogether?
• Who are your learners or your audience? What is important to know about them?
• What’s the timeframe? For example, will this all happen in one hour, or be spread over a series of meetings?
• What do you need to make it happen? Say, a long-arm stapler, or ideas for potential topics, or a stack of kid-friendly zines to browse.
• Write out the steps for what you expect learners to do:
• What are you worried about?
• What are you excited about?
• How will you know if it worked?

Additional resources

There’s a whole page on this very website filled with resources for teaching with zines: http://zinelibraries.info/running-a-zine-library/teaching-with-zines/. You can also download the Teaching With Zines zine (pdf).

This zine features recommendations for teaching with zines for all different ages and audiences.

If you’re working with children, this post about zines for kids may be helpful.

Our panelists recommended the following:

General Resources

• Deaf/Hard of Hearing Technology Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center

Captions for meetings

• All presenters should be encouraged to use a web captioner.  Alternatively, program attendees can use the captioner on their own devices (which will require using a separate browser from Zoom). Suggested captioning software:
  • otter.ai

Making the presentation accessible

• Have well defined roles and responsibilities:
  • Presenter(s)
  • Note Taker(s)
  • Facilitator/Coordinator(s) (Representatives from IZLuC who could be co-host of meeting)
  • Chat monitor
• Include broad trigger/content warnings at prior to or at the beginning of the session if potentially sensitive topics are being discussed
• To minimize cognitive load for larger meetings, it is suggested that most attendees turn off their video (except for the designated roles above and anyone who is controlling the floor, i.e. participant asking a question, which there should only be one person at a time holding the floor) with a max of four videos shared at any one time.
• Establish clear and consistent ways for audience participation: i.e. use the chat and raise hand function of Zoom (please note that the raise hand tool is limited because it is difficult to see the order in which hands are raised).
• Try and minimize your background noise when/if you are speaking or facilitating. Utilize the Spotlight feature when possible/necessary

Presentation materials best practices

• Make presentation materials accessible:
  • Share slides/documents or other shared materials before the presentation
  • Ensure that the materials are built accessibly, i.e. heading structure, alt text for images, avoid big blocks of text, and do not use acronyms or jargon, etc.  Automated tools available for this include built in accessibility software like Microsoft suite or Grackle for Google or Adobe Pro DC.
• Speak clearly and slowly. Take pauses and breaks to check in with the audience.
• Verbally describe any visuals you use, e.g. an image on a PPT slide should be described for audience members that may not be able to visually see the image.

Recording the meeting

• Let the audience know the meeting is being recorded.
• Provide captioning and transcript.

General Resources

• Guidelines for Creating Image Descriptions via American Anthropological Association
  • Includes an explanation of the difference between alt text, image descriptions, and captions
• Use Instagram Threads to create automatic captioning for your videos that you can then download to your device (can also upload existing videos);
  • IGTV videos also have an automatic captioning feature

• YouTube can provide automatic captioning for new or existing videos

Consent to Post

• Do I have permission from the creator to feature their work in a social media post and/or tag them?

Accessible Content

• Does the order of content in an Instagram Stories post, multi-photo post, and/or Twitter thread make sense?
• Did I capitalize the first letter of each new word when using hashtags?  Often referred to as “Camel Case.”
• Can I use a link shortener when posting long links?
  • bitly.com
  • usehyperlink.com
• Can I indicate what kind of link it is/where it will be taking users? Ex. www.content.com/388 [form]
• Did I use acronyms or other terms that may need to be explained?

Alt Text and Image Descriptions

• Have I written alt text for all images for users using screen readers?
• Have I written and included an image description for each image?

Video captions and Audio Transcripts

• Can I include captions in the video?
• If not, can I include a transcript of the video or make it available via another publicly available file/link?

[RM_Form id=’3′]

Programming blocks are color-coded to help you find sessions that are live during a time convenient where you are. The Blue Scissors Block begins each day around late morning if your time zone is near the Melbourne time zone. The Yellow Photocopier Block begins each day around late morning if you are in a time zone that lines up with Mumbai’s. The Pink Stapler Block begins in late morning each day if you are in a time zone close to Berlin’s. The Purple Glue Stick Block aligns with late morning in places that line up near the longitude of Los Angeles. For more information and to find your UTC time zone code, check out this tool:
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

To confuse things, the clocks in the US go back on Sunday at 2am – which is why you’ll see that from the yellow photocopier block onwards, the time relative to UTC has changed! Don’t get caught out!

All programming will be in English unless otherwise noted. There are 15 minute breaks built into blocks between talks, tours and unconference sessions.

Sunday, 1st November

00:00 – 03:30 UTC – Blue Scissors Block 3

Register Here

Bilingual Zine Workshop with Yago Cura of Hinchas Press

https://linktr.ee/HINCHAS_Press

Yago Cura of Hinchas Press will talk about the James Foley Scriptorium project and then facilitate a hands-on workshop. This bilingual zine workshop aims to share the language acquisition capacity of 6-fold zines, in and out of the classroom, while illustrating several generative trajectories that zinesters can take to satiate their language-nerding. The workshop will not only impart best practices for making polyglot zines, but provide several made by HINCHAS Press and used in workshops, classroom, and public library programming. This workshop will be followed by two hours of unconference sessions.

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

05:00 – 08:30 UTC – Yellow Photocopier Block 3

Register Here

Athens Zine Bibliotheque Tour
Presented by Panayiota and Tassos – https://theathenszinebibliotheque.gr/
@theathenszinebibliotheque (ig)

Join Panayiota & Tassos from the Athens Zine Bibliotheque for a tour of their space, and some zines from their collection. This tour will be prerecorded with closed captions. This will be followed by a live Q&A, and then two hours of unconference sessions.

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

10:00 – 13:30 UTC – Pink Stapler Block 3

Register Here

Zinedabaad Collective – @zinedabaad (ig)

Presenters: Riya and Devashree

Join Riya and Devashree from the Zinedabaad Collective to hear about the history of self-publishing in India and what led them to it.

This will be followed by two hour long unconference sessions in a space facilitated by Zinedabaad. The first will draw from the talk to broadly look at tracing our relationships with zines and self-publishing. The second will be a discussion and hands on exploration of the questions raised throughout this block – expect some zine making, so come prepared with paper and your zine crafting tools of choice.

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

18:00 – 21:30 UTC – Purple Glue Stick Block 3

Register Here

Principles of Zine Cataloging

Presenters: Joshua Barton, Rhonda Kauffman, and Kelly Swickard

Join Joshua Barton (Michigan State Univ.), Rhonda Kauffman (Univ. of Connecticut), and Kelly Swickard (ProjectMUSE) as we philosophize on the principles and issues of cataloging zines. Topics will cover identifying creators, titles, subjects, and more. Perfect for a novice or experienced cataloger, curious or skeptical, this session will provide foundations for describing your own zine collection. This session will be followed by 2 hours of unconference sessions.

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

21:30 – 23:00 UTC – Rainbow Block One and Only

BONUS session: UnZineFest! 

To close out this year’s International Zine Librarians (un)Conference, please come say hello to some amazing zinesters as they share their creations and informally chat about zinemaking. Tablers include Hope Amico, Charlie Birch, Jonas Cannon, Kassi Grace, Avy Jetter, David Lasky, Liz Mason, Liz Yerby, and Ziba of ZebraRadar Zine. Brown Recluse Zine Distro will also be represented in some capacity. More tablers being added soon!

>>>>>Friday, 30 October Schedule >>>> Saturday, 31 October Schedule

Programming blocks are color-coded to help you find sessions that are live during a time convenient where you are. The Blue Scissors Block begins each day around late morning if your time zone is near the Melbourne time zone. The Yellow Photocopier Block begins each day around late morning if you are in a time zone that lines up with Mumbai’s. The Pink Stapler Block begins in late morning each day if you are in a time zone close to Berlin’s. The Purple Glue Stick Block aligns with late morning in places that line up near the longitude of Los Angeles. For more information and to find your UTC time zone code, check out this tool:
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

All programming will be in English unless otherwise noted. There are 15 minute breaks built into blocks between talks, tours and unconference sessions.

Saturday, 31st October

00:00 – 03:30 UTC – Blue Scissors Block 2

Register Here

The State of Zines in Australian Libraries Panel Discussion
Presenters: Dr Jessie Lymm, John Stevens, and Daniel Wee

While we know a lot about zine libraries in the UK and USA, what is happening with zines in libraries down here in Australia? What libraries are collecting zines? How are these being made available to the public? And what does the future look like for zines in Australian libraries and those who are passionate about them? Join a group of knowledgeable people on the subject: Dr Jessie Lymm, John Stevens, and Daniel Wee, in conversation with Kassi Grace. This will be followed by two hours of open unconference sessions.

The facilitator will be Kassi Grace

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

05:00 – 08:30 UTC – Yellow Photocopier Block 2

Register Here

Sister Library Tour
Presented by Aqui of Sister Library – @sister.library (ig)

Join us for this presentation from Aqui of Sister Library, along with a showing of a short documentary. This presentation will be followed by two hour-long open unconference sessions providing space to discuss the presentation and the questions, actions and topics raised as a group.

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

10:00 – 13:30 UTC – Pink Stapler Block 2

Register Here

Archiv der Jugendkulturen and Museum of Youth Culture

Presented by Lisa Schug and Daniel Schneider from @archiv_der_jugendkulturen (ig) and El Affleck from the Museum of Youth Culture, UK

Join Lisa Schug & Daniel Schneider from the Archiv der Jugendkulturen, Berlin, and El Affleck from the Museum of Youth Culture, UK, as they introduce us to zines in their collections, share their experiences and discuss the how, what and why of collecting youth cultures. This block will involve two pre-recorded tours of the respective collections, an unconference session, and end with a live Q&A.

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

18:00 – 21:30 UTC – Purple Glue Stick Block 2

Register Here

Lightning Talks! Smashing Zine Folks Giving Snappy Presentations

Presenters: Hope Amico, Amy Drayer, Violet Fox, Jenna Freedman, BluRaven C. Houvener​​​​​​​, Avy Jetter, Michelle Nitto, Raul Rodriguez, Aldiman Sinaga of PTK Distribution, and April Ibarra Siqueiros​​​​​​​

Please join us for a series of captivatingly concise five-minute talks related to zines and/or libraries! This will be followed by two hours of open unconference sessions.

The facilitator will be Kelsey Smith.

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

>>>>Friday, 30 October Schedule >>>Sunday, 1 November Schedule

Programming blocks are color-coded to help you find sessions that are live during a time convenient where you are. The Blue Scissors Block begins each day around late morning if your time zone is near the Melbourne time zone. The Yellow Photocopier Block begins each day around late morning if you are in a time zone that lines up with Mumbai’s. The Pink Stapler Block begins in late morning each day if you are in a time zone close to Berlin’s. The Purple Glue Stick Block aligns with late morning in places that line up near the longitude of Los Angeles. For more information and to find your UTC time zone code, check out this tool:
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

All programming will be in English unless otherwise noted. There are 15 minute breaks built into blocks between talks, tours and unconference sessions.

Friday 30th October

00:00 – 03:30 UTC – Blue Scissors Block 1

Register Here

Quarantine Zine Library
Presented by Sticky Institute – www.stickyinstitute.com

From Melbourne’s Sticky Institute comes a conversation about making and selling zines in the time of COVID-19. Sticky Institute is a zine shop and making space normally open in the subway under Flinders Street station in Melbourne. As the whole city closed to COVID-19 lockdown, the volunteers at Sticky created Quarantine Zine Library as a way to keep us together even while we’re apart. This will be followed by two hours of open unconference sessions.

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

05:00 – 08:30 UTC  – Yellow Photocopier Block 1

Register Here

Asia Art Archive
Presented by Sam and Elaine –
@asiaartarchive (ig) @asiaartarchive (twitter)

Zines at the Asia Art Archive: Join Sam and Elaine from the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong to hear about the origins of the zine collection at AAA, the scope of the collection and how they have approached cataloguing. They will discuss how acquiring zines created by artist run spaces, creators and independent publishers active in Asia enriches narratives of collective authorship and hybrid collaboration in shared urgencies and alternative spaces. This will be followed by two hours of open unconference sessions.

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

10:00 – 13:30 UTC – Pink Stapler Block 1

Register Here

Zine Librarian Code of Ethics
Facilitated by André Wenzel

Come and join us in discussing the Zine Librarian Code of Ethics . What does being an ethical zine librarian mean? Are there changes to the Code that should be made? This will be followed by two hours of open unconference sessions.

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

18:00 – 21:30 UTC – Purple Glue Stick Block 1

Register Here

Teaching With Zines

For learners of any age, zines can be an engaging and even transformative way to learn — whether you are teaching about science, information literacy, or even zines themselves. In this session, a panel of librarians will speak to their experiences teaching with zines with youth, college students, and the broader community. Then, we will host breakout groups for you to talk through your own dreams, fears, and ideas for teaching with zines in your own context. This will be followed by two hours of open unconference sessions.

Our panelists are:

• Ann Matsushima Chiu is the Social Sciences Librarian at Reed College in Portland, OR. She teaches instruction and critical thinking skills through zines, leads zine workshops in the community and has organized zine fests and events for more than a decade.
• Cathy Camper works as a youth services outreach librarian at Multnomah County Library, where she’s also a zine librarian. She’s the author of the Lowriders in Space graphic novel series, a founding member of the Portland Women of Color Zine Collective, and co-editor of the candy zine Sugar Needle.
• Maria Cunningham is the Head of Special Collections and Archives at Reed College in Portland, OR. She started the Reed Zine Library and curates the collection rare book collections, college archives and often conducts instruction sessions and tours featuring zines.
• Nicky Rodriguez is a queer, Puerto Rican comic artist with a passion for pushing the bounds of storytelling to explore inclusive, diverse narratives and the deconstruction of traditional narrative form. She uses comics to explore Puerto Rican culture and the multi-faceted nature of identity and has an MFA in Comics and BFA in Animation from California College of the Arts. She currently teaches art to youth virtually from Colorado on top of doing freelance illustration and comic work.

The facilitator will be Kelly McElroy.

Before the session, we invite you to take a few minutes to reflect on the questions listed on this resource page.

What’s an Unconference session?

An unconference session is a space where the topic and form of discussion is decided by the people in the (zoom) room. For a better idea of what, why and how, see: http://zinelibraries.info/wiki/zluc2020/unconference-sessions/

>>>Saturday, 31 October Schedule >>> Sunday, 1 November Schedule

What is an unconference?

This is from Eric Goldhagen’s blog and was written about Drupal Camp in NYC but applies to the IZL(u)C, too.

• An unconference is a participant centric conference, the structure is more concerned with the value to the participants than the value for the sponsors or organizers (in a similar way that the GPL Free Software license is more concerned with the rights of the software user than the software owner)
• At a normal conference, the hallway conversations tend to be the best parts. At an unconference, it’s all hallway!
• unconference tries to replicate the community centric nature of Free Software projects in the way we organize an event. Everyone is a participant.
• Whoever shows up are the right people to have here
• Whatever happens is what is supposed to happen
• If you find yourself in a place where you are neither learning or contributing, be respectful but use your feet to find another room where you can learn and contribute
• Your participation is not only welcome, it’s necessary

Possible discussion topics

• Collection development for zines in a language you don’t speak
• Promoting zines in the classroom
• Multi-language zine collections — how do you put them on the shelf?
• Cataloguing: examples of catalogues, sharing practices, zine categorization/digitization, information security
• Keeping zines safe (protecting from wear & tear and stealing)
• Budgets & zine acquisition
• writing funding apps for zine libraries – a how to
• basic archival practice / record keeping skill share
• Zines in a public library: how to start a collection, where to put a zine collection, age group
• working with space/location limitations
• Running a zine festival within a library
• Experience organizing virtual events
• Zine clubs
• Working with young people, age appropriate zines for young people, engaging young people with zines
• Pandemic – organizing without being physically together
• Community Building
• Activism & Zines/Zine Libraries
• Showing the value of zines to administrators

Steps for facilitating an unconference session by Zoom

• Give folks some time to get oriented and do some brainstorming of the topics they would like to discuss. You can use the chat for folks to enter their ideas, cull from the list above, and see if anything is being shared on Discord. This could take some time, but that’s okay!
• Help get a sense of what folks are interested in — you might use the Whiteboard feature so that people can annotate, or just ask people to list their top two topics in the chat, for example. Your goal is to end up with a schedule for the rest of the time together, so people can decide where they’d like to go, when.
• Make sure that every session has a facilitator and at least one note-taker. The facilitator role is to help keep the conversation moving and keep an eye on the time. The notetaker should jot down notes in the shared documents (links to those are posted on the main IZL(u)C page).
• Use breakout rooms if there are multiple topics of conversation, or if any groups of people want to split off.
• Leave up a slide or the whiteboard feature to help people get oriented if there is more than one room. Someone should stay in that main room to direct in folks who join late.
• Zoom transcription (captions) is not a capability in breakout rooms. If someone needs live transcription, they should be a part of the main room, not a breakout room. Otter transcription may be a possibility for breakout rooms.

Tips and tricks for facilitators/participants

• Be flexible! This is all an experiment. We will share tips throughout the weekend as we learn together how this works.
• Make space for awkwardness and mental processing, acknowledge there will be silences and fumbling for Zoom controls, acknowledge the challenge of coming from different spaces.
• Participants’ initial expectations may be just to sit back and watch, not necessarily active engagement, so let people know how unconferences differ from regular conferences (see the list above).
• Make clear the different ways people can participate in Zoom: chat, have your video on, adding to shared notes, raise hand feature, etc.
• Explore in advance tools you might want to use such as Google Jamboard and Cryptpad so you’re familiar with them before sessions.

July 21st 2020 was International Zine Library Day! As a way of celebrating, we held virtual and multimodal events that spanned the globe and created a way for zine librarians to meet up from around the world. Three programming blocks ran from UTC 20:00 to UTC 04:00 with all kinds of events, from workshops to panels to readings (and, of course, more). The notes and recordings from these are available below. Added:

Cook Zine Presentation

Notes

Zines and the Borderlands

Notes
Video

Teaching with Zines

Notes

Tabling Round 1

Notes

Zine Librarian Pets

Notes

ZineWiki Info Sessions

Notes
Video

Make a Mini Zine

Notes
Video

QZAP Tour

Notes
Video

Tabling Round 2

Notes

Zine Libraries and Zine Librarianship Panel

Notes
Video

Australian Zinester Readings

Notes
Video

Zine Library Talk

Notes
Video

 Fran Chang and Ella Vonholtum
 UTC – 23.00

Resources from Presenters:
Padlet for Top Million Pets in Zines
Fran’s website and her Etsy store

Resources from Chat:
Rochester film festival, submissions are due next week!  

Session Notes: 
Fran Chang read from her zine: Picklezine #1. She also publishes Disquiet, a halloween zine. Participants showed off their pets. Everyone’s pets are so cute! About 40% of participants have cats. 23% have dogs.

The padlet for top million pets in zines had lots of contributors add to it during this session. The discussion mostly centered around our pets and zines about pets and why do cats want to eat zines? The chat went something like this…

  John Stevens, State Library of Victoria
  UTC – 3:30

Resources from Chat:
Polyester Books

Session Notes: 
John started at the State Library of Victoria as a new graduate in 2007, and maintained a connection with the collection zine throughout the years. He is now in a new role as full time cataloger. The zine collection at SLV started in the late 1990s, with active collection beginning in 1999. This was an uncertain time for zines and zinesters due to the blossoming of the Internet, which allowed for widespread distribution of information. Some people thought that other people wouldn’t make zines anymore, now that there were online alternatives available. 

Two librarians at SLV went to Paul, the owner of Polyester Books (see image below) in Sydney, asking Paul to collect one of each new zine that was sold by the store. While some zines shifted online, people were still making zines, but less about sharing information and more about personal connections and insights. The base of people making zines continued increasing through the early 2000s. Eloise at the Victoria State Library was connected with the Sticky Institute, and a new connection between SLV and Sticky was formed. Polyester Books closed in 2016.

Zines are difficult to classify and describe, they often lack standardized information and don’t have ISBNs or other standard numbers. The Octopod in Newcastle (This is not art conglomerate) accrued zine donations, but struggled to arrange/collect them (arranging by size, by color, etc.); eventually their collection became part of Newcastle Public Library. SLV is a “gatekeeping institution,” and zines are in special collections, which makes dealing with zinesters fraught with institutional rules–they can seem off putting to creators and people who wish to view the collection. No browsing is permitted, which curtails serendipitous discovery. 

The value of the SLV’s zine collection will be revealed in time, especially for its usefulness to researchers and academics, e.g. those looking into third wave feminism. There’s so much zine material being published, but it’s ephemeral which makes it difficult to collect everything. There will never be an exhaustive collection of zines. Also, some creators do not want their zines to be added to the collection. It’s important to respect that, zine collections can not exist without the goodwill of the zine community.

In 2017 there was a touring zine exhibition of zines and artists’ books started at SLV, which toured art spaces, libraries, and rural areas throughout Australia. Zines were made for the exhibition that people could handle freely. Another event Zine-a Warrior Print-fest happened in the library [or at Museum of Contemporary Art??? missed this], multiple zinesters tabled. 

As for the future of zine librarianship and zines in Australia: John sees collecting of zines continuing in libraries. He sees the need for those in libraries to recognize zines as a medium which is distinct from other media, and is driven by an ideological approach to DIY production. The zine community continues to grow. John sees an emerging interest in zines in librarianship as ephemeral creative production. Libraries have been impacted strongly by COVID and adapting quickly. Distances in Australia lead to challenges in connecting to each other; there is a need for libraries to be intentional in maintaining connections and keeping momentum in supporting zine communities.