Zine Collection Research Articles

Neformalių XX a. pabaigos – XXI a. pradžios Lietuvos jaunimo leidinių – fanzinų – leidybos tendencijos

This article analyzes Lithuanian youth subcultural group publications – fanzines (zines) – which have not yet received broader attention from researchers. Paper fanzines started to be created at the end of the 20th century and became popular in the 1990s, spreading Western culture ideas and changing the political, and socio-cultural environment in Lithuania along with technological copying and reproduction possibilities. Using resources from Lithuania’s Youth Culture Digital Archive “Lithuanian Zine Collection” and additionally collected sources, the article analyzes the trends in the creation and publishing of fanzines. By comparing the publishing similarities and differences of fanzines attributed to different subcultural groups, the aim is to understand the cultural context of these publications, their relationship with readers, and the publishing possibilities of fanzine creators. The study applies descriptive metadata analysis and systematization of fanzines, as well as ethnographic research methods (targeted interview, questionnaire, and qualitative interviews with fanzine authors, publishers, and collectors). The research results showed that in Lithuania, mainly in the 1990s, metal music fanzine authors, unlike punks and science fiction fans, created more publications written in English. Metal music fanzines were characterized by greater volume. Science fiction fans’ publications differed from those of metalheads and punks by a greater number of continuous issues and fewer one-time publications. Authors of fanzines associated with punk ideology mostly chose to independently reproduce publications using a copying machine, while creators of metal music and science fiction fanzines more often used professional printing services. The language used in fanzines and its style helped to form a close relationship with readers, revealed the identity traits of subcultural groups, and helped metal music fanzine authors to integrate into the international fanzine culture context. Seeking independence and individuality, fanzine creators disregarded professional publishing standards. Fanzine publishing depended on individual choice, motivation, creativity, reader interest, and technological possibilities (publication reproduction, layout). Fanzines created in Lithuania became one of the main forms of idea dissemination, creative freedom, and self-expression for alternative youth communication.

And Then Suddenly, It Was Simply Everywhere

This article offers an artistic reflection on the Queer Percussion Research Group Zine Collection (2023) through the concept of shimmering as a queer political and positional affect across light and sound. With over a dozen contributions that consist of artist publications, pamphlets, and experimental scores, the Zine Collection was produced by folks “interested in the intersection of queerness and percussion in a variety of contexts.” While glitter scatters across contributions from inside the clear plastic folio, this writing recounts the impact and implications of glitter’s trace as it moves between surfaces, bodies, and skins. Rather than declaring glitter as inherently queer, this work considers the ways that glitter—and other glistening things—“blur the body,” as Michele White writes, and disrupts normative presentations of gender. Its reflective surfaces thus become entangled with the slippages between the masculine/feminine binary, shifting the legibility of the (gendered) surface that might allow viewers to see otherwise. Thinking with and alongside glitter’s shimmering properties allows for a reconceptualization of queer, which might enable further forms of conceptual movement and framing that extend its theoretical capacity.

Zines of rupture: theorising migration studies using comics by racialised migrants and refugees

ABSTRACT Much research has been carried out on the discursive dehumanization of non-Anglo Celtic migrants to Australia – especially refugees and asylum seekers. However, this discourse also has an affective dimension that, in Sara Ahmed’s terms, ‘stick’, impressing upon non-white migrants at a corporeal level. Depictions of self and Other in comic zines such as Where Do I Belong? by Silent Army, Villawood: Notes from a Detention Centre by Safdar Ahmed, and The Refugee Art Project’s zine collection clearly demonstrate the ways in which the body is implicated in narratives about migration and asylum. This paper argues that the comic zine medium also allows for ‘something else’ to surface; namely, an excess with an interruptive rhythm. This excess is posited here as a type of ‘diasporic intimacy’—a dystopic and unsuspecting affective force that disrupts the temporal and spatial rhythms of everyday life. By harnessing diasporic intimacies, the comic zines discussed here redeploy sticky and toxic discourses about migration and asylum, creating space for the migrant body to resist and reassemble.

Zine-Making as an Inquiry-Based Activity for Korean Language Classroom

ABSTRACT This article explores an inquiry-based zine-making activity in an advanced Korean language class and the creation of a webzine collection. Zines, which emphasize self-expression, are self-produced publications often created by amateurs. The zine-making project enables students to enhance critical thinking skills by problematizing and researching social issues and language proficiency by expressing their opinions in written Korean. To archive the students’ zine projects, the first Korean language zine collection was established in TSpace, an open access institutional repository at the University of Toronto Libraries. The article discusses the potential of zines as group projects and presents students’ feedback, highlighting their positive impact on promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) values in the learning environment.

Why Collect Zines?: Notes on the Soviet and Russian Rock Zine Collection in the Global Resources Center of George Washington University Libraries

ABSTRACT This article discusses the phenomenon of rock music zines in the Soviet Union and Russia, focusing on the historical value of zines, as well as their tradition within the realm of samizdat, a milieu where zines flourished, with their writers-editors, production values, types of design, and audiences. Types of zines are discussed as well as their relationship to traditional samizdat. The collection of rock music zines in that International Counterculture Archive at the George Washington University (GWU) Library’s Global Resources Center is described in this regard with special notes given to the provenance of the collection as well as to the cataloging and descriptive approach to processing the rock music zine collection.

Unconventional collecting in extraordinary times: Documenting the pandemic through a COVID-19 Zine Collection

When COVID-19 caused the world to go into lockdown in early 2020, some were inspired to create zines documenting their lives and experiences during the pandemic. That spring, The Ohio State University’s Rare Books & Manuscripts Library (RBML) began seeking out these publications, and now has a collection of more than 80 COVID-19 and quarantine zines. This article discusses how and why RBML has developed this zine collection, including the process of finding and acquiring zines, exploring their content, and plans for the collection.

Going against the archival grain: case studies of pop culture archives of a music scene, regional zines, and local beer

ABSTRACT Popular culture collecting in academic special collections and archives is sometimes still viewed within the institution as a challenge to traditional collection development, which has tended to emphasize the mainstream and enshrine privilege and power. This is especially the case when the cultures and media emphasized in such collecting might be categorized as being counter-cultural, DIY (‘do-it-yourself’), or somehow ‘other.’ This article consists of three case studies that emphasize recently developed popular culture-based collections at Rutgers University’s Special Collections and University Archives that focus on voices and communities outside archival norms of collecting: the New Brunswick Music Scene Archive, the New Jersey Regional Zine Collection, and the New Jersey Beer Collection. An emphasis on how faculty and staff have developed these collections by working with participants and creators outside mainstream popular culture leads to examples of how faculty and staff have engaged in outreach, particularly among students. Woven throughout are examples of challenges faculty and staff have faced around institutional acceptance, inclusivity, and cultural sensitivities along with work to overcome the challenges. The article concludes by considering future popular culture collection-building endeavours and engagement among students and community members.

Zine Objects and Orientations in/as Arts Research: Documenting Art Teacher Practices and Identities Through Zine Creation, Collection, and Criticism

Zine making involves not only the creation of handmade and self-published books, but also local distribution in zine communities, as well as archival processes of zine collecting in university and community libraries. These creative and communal practices, as part of the intellectual discourse known as zine studies, engender valuable arts-based research orientations and implications for art education. This article investigates zines for their potential as objects of research exploring art teacher identities and autoethnography, fandom in zines as a devotional orientation and interdisciplinary form of research methodology, and research questions pertaining to practices of collecting and archiving zine materials in universities and zine communities. Characterized by proliferation in the 1990s and a strong contemporary continuation, zines continue to create distinctly personal and communal spaces for art education reflection.

Not for you? Ethical implications of archiving zines

The archival value of zines (self-published pamphlets often produced by radical and marginalized communities) as historical records has been well documented in academic research. Red Chidgey refers to zines as ‘sources of advocacy and empowerment for those who make them, an attempt to bear witness to their own lives’. As evidence of networks, cultures, linguistics and experiences of marginalized individuals and communities, zines often exist as the only representation of ephemeral and otherwise undocumented spaces, which makes them incredibly valuable as the primary source material. Following the establishment of large zine collections at heritage spaces including the Women’s Library, British Library, Wellcome Library and Tate, zines are now regularly collected and used in programming at heritage organizations. But what does it mean to archive and make use of zines – particularly those created by marginalized makers and communities – in an institutional heritage context? This article considers the ethical implications of archiving zine practice and cultures – anti-institutional in its nature – in institutional spaces. Through a case study analysis of the community-led archive project Queer Zine Archive Project, I argue that, if zines are archived, it is imperative that archive workers are critically thinking about and incorporating the originating politics of zine culture into protocols for cataloguing, access, interpretation and use of these materials.

A Digital Voice for Russian Rock: Perspectives on Digitization of Russian Rock Zines

ABSTRACTSoviet and post-Soviet rock music zines comprise a fascinating resource not only for historians of music, but also for cultural historians, graphic designers, linguists, and specialists in other disciplines as well as the general public. This article discusses the importance of creating a digital project, based on the highly unique Russian rock/Youth Counterculture rock zine collection from the Global Resources Center at the George Washington University Library and other sources. The author describes the content and organization of the project, which would serve as a platform for research and teaching. In addition, various challenges involved in the implementation of the project, such as copyright issues, are addressed.

What we do, is (still) secret? Collection, care and accessibility of zines in UK collections

In 2013, as the dissertation component of an MA Library and Information Studies course at University College London, I carried out a selective study of UK zine libraries and collections. Case studies of both ‘institutional’ collections that were part of established libraries like London College of Communication Library (University of the Arts London) and the British Library, and ‘independent’ collections such as Salford Zine Library, 56a Infoshop and the Edinburgh Fanzine archive were carried out to draw attention to issues around collection, care and accessibility of zine collections. As much of the literature around zine collections in libraries at that time was focused on the USA, it was important to draw attention to what was happening in the UK. This article summarizes the findings of my dissertation, and the developments in zine libraries and librarianship since I wrote it, as zine collections have become more popular and a growing field in the UK.

Developing and raising awareness of the zine collections at the British Library

This article presents a practice-based account of collection development related to zines in the British Library. Rather than making the case for the collecting of zines, it aims to describe the process of collection building in a specific time and place, so that researchers have a better understanding of why certain resources are offered to them and others are not, and to share experiences with other librarians with zine collections. Zines form an element of the cultural memory of activists and cultural creators, and for researchers studying them it would seem useful to make transparent the motivations, methods and limitations of collection building. Librarians in the USA have written about their collecting practices for some time, for instance at Barnard College1 and New York Public Library2, there has been less written about the practices of UK libraries. The article aims to make a contribution as a case study alongside accounts of collection development in a range of other libraries with zine collections, and it is written primarily from my own perspective as a curator in Contemporary British Collections since 2015, focusing on current practice, with some reference to earlier collecting.

Gathering the margins: the London College of Communication Library Zine Collection

The London College of Communication (LCC) Zine Collection was founded in July 2009 and now contains more than 4,000 zines. It is the most heavily used special collection at LCC Library. This article outlines the history and development of the collection, its uses in teaching, learning and research, and its value for widening access to, and representing diversity in an academic library environment.

Zine Authors’ Attitudes about Inclusion in Public and Academic Library Collections: A Survey-Based Study

Zine collections are becoming an increasingly popular addition to public and academic library holdings. Although academics have made strong arguments for the value of zines’ inclusion as part of our cultural heritage, current research does not focus on zine authors’ perspectives. How do the zine writers themselves feel about having their work—which is often highly personal—collected, shared, and sometimes circulated in the public and academic library sphere? This study will report the findings of a survey designed to uncover zine authors’ attitudes about having their works collected, shared, and circulated—in academic libraries, public libraries, and institutionally affiliated archival collections across the United States.

Going to New Sources: Zines at the Vassar College Library

ABSTRACTThis conference presentation report introduces the zine collection at the Vassar College Library and describes the research and planning that went into advocating for and building the collection. The discussion addresses several key workflow factors that need to be considered when building a zine collection, including collection development, acquisitions, and cataloging. The report also shares local problems and solutions implemented at Vassar College.

We Need to Talk About Zines: The Case for Collecting Alternative Publications in the Australian Academic University Library

The paper examines the research potential of zines and the current issues around acquiring these disparate publications for Australian academic libraries. The paper reports a review of the literature and a brief environmental scan in the form of a survey, which suggest that Australian tertiary institutions are undecided or unsure about how and why zines could be a useful research tool in the future. It is argued here that zines are an important component of the cultural fabric of a freethinking, responsive and reflective society. The subversive and at times transgressive nature of zines makes the conscious collecting of these underground texts complex. A review of the current practices of international academic libraries and the survey results undertaken for the purpose of this paper, suggest that Australian academic libraries are behind their overseas colleagues in their consideration of these issues. Zines are important cultural documents that reveal the creativity, values and complexity of unrepresented marginalised youth, among others. The author suggests that, it is imperative that Australian academic libraries actively collect zines to preserve and make available for research, records of hyper-personal, contemporary texts that proffer to the reader an insight into the individual psyche of any given period in time.IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE• Creating partnerships and engaging in conversation with zinesters and library staff can assist in the development and creation of a working collection.• Collecting zines for its research potential can be speculative; identifying the strengths of your current collection can provide a clear collection development policy for acquiring zines.• Educating and demystifying zine culture can assist Australian librarians in determining whether a zine collection is suitable for their institution.

“Deep in the Heart of Texzines:” Developing an Archival Zine Collection

Zines are increasingly becoming seen as legitimate subjects of collection development in libraries and archives. In this article, the author expands on a poster he co-created for the 2014 ALA Annual Conference that discussed the genesis and development of a zine collection at Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A&M University. This process involved the creation of a workable collection policy that slotted into existing library collection strategies, the initial and ongoing acquisition of zines, and the development of a promotional event that publicized the zine collection and brought to Texas A&M's campus several zinesters and examples of their alternative voices.

The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in OrderKateEichhorn. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2013.

Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order Kate Eichhorn. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2013.The specific focus of Eichhorn's volume is centrality of the archive and practices of archiving in the activism, cultural production, and scholarship of feminists born during and after the rise of the second wave movement with an emphasis on only affect but also order(3). It is the ordering process that enables access not just to the documents, but also, for Eichhorn, the potential for agency in the constraining social context shaped by neo-liberalism (7). In effect, the archive can be used to re-inform the present by de-centering the normative understanding of the past and allowing other interpretations of evidence to develop and emerge, by essentially queering the questions addressed to the archive.The book is comprised of six sections: the introduction, four separate chapters, and the conclusion. While her work incorporates such anticipated theorists as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu, she also draws on the work of Ann Cvetkovich, Judith Halberstarn, and the scholar/practitioner Jenna Freedman, whom she discusses in depth. concept of an archival turn is adopted from Ann Laura Stoler's work Along the Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2009). In Chapter One, The 'Scrap Heap' Reconsidered: Selected Archives of Feminist Archiving, the author presents a partial history of archiving, beginning with what she identifies as the decline of the first wave of activism. From her perspective, this context of decline allows the collectors to orient their practice in defiance of the idealization of political progress for feminists. It also pulls the archivist into consideration of the as it matters in the present, which then exceeds a merely preservationist objective in maintaining the resources (31). It enables the possibility of the emergence of archivist as activist.In the next three chapters, Eichhorn presents three case studies of feminist documents and self-published materials as special collections in university libraries across North America (15). Chapter Two, Archival Regeneration: Zine Collections at the Sallie Bingham Center of Duke University, explores the transformation of the audience in the donation by Sarah Dyer of 2050 self-produced zines to a formal academic institution. Her description of the inter-generational proximities which become possible in a archive support her contention that collection itself may advance storytelling that in itself can lead to a reframing of women's history.Chapter Three, Redefining a Movement: Riot Grrrl at Fales Library and Special Collection of New York University continues the exploration of the relationship between the collector, the archive, and the shaping of story. …

Before Blogs, There Were Zines: Berman, Danky, and the Political Case for Zine Collecting in North American Academic Libraries

Recent attention has been paid to collecting born-digital, nontraditional, self-published forms, such as blogs and tweets. However, what of print-based, nontraditional, self-published materials? Before there were blogs, there were zines. Zines, much like blogs and tweets, are a challenging and difficult material to collect, but upon consideration of the concepts of Sandy Berman and James Danky, the onus is on academic libraries to have zine collections. An examination of ARL and CARL websites indicates that zine collecting is not a widespread practice in academic libraries; this article argues that, even in our contemporary digital, social-networked era, it should be.

Zines and the Library

Zines, loosely defined as self-published magazines, provide a cultural insight to the time in which they are published, making them a genre that libraries may want to consider collecting. Due to their ephemeral nature, however, they create collecting, cataloging, and preserving challenges to libraries. Few libraries across the country have met these challenges and maintain zine collections. Although no two libraries met the challenges in the same way, their unique approaches to zine collections may inspire other librarians to investigate the appropriateness and feasibility of zine collections.