“There is no apostrophe in zine. Zine is not short for magazine. A magazine is a product, a commercial commodity. A zine is a labor of love, producing no profit, and frequently a loss, of time at least. In a magazine, information is just another ingredient, thinly sliced layers to keep the cream filling of advertising from sticking together. Information is the reason a zine exists; everything else, down to the paper it’s printed on, is there to convey information.”
– Larry-Bob, publisher of Holy Titclamps

The Salt Lake City Public Library, an already well-known pioneer in developing collections of alternative press zines, has created a website catalog – a virtual living archive – of its zine holdings which now number than 3,500. The new website is available here.

Working from the well-established foundation of his predecessors, Clinton Watson, library staff member, says the new website catalog reinforces the library’s commitment that selecting the best publications for its collection must include alternative press offerings, a cultural form of popular communication where the idea that every voice matters is implicit.

And, Watson had to resolve quite a few complexities in developing the collection, a protocol for access, and an ever-evolving catalog, along with the challenges of storing and processing zines whose creators rely on ingenious, often idiosyncratic, materials and publishing formats. Zines defy the traditional classification and ordering so readily applicable to mainstream press offerings.

The website will allow users to create password-protected accounts to track and bookmark their own interests in specific zines as they are identified by topical tags. Watson encourages users to be heavily involved in making suggestions about tags, reviewing the zines in the collection, and alerting the library to zines that should be added to the collection.

“We’re collecting sample copies of as many zines as possible, of which most may only have one or two issues while others have surprising longevity spanning years,” Watson says. “We decided it would be less than ideal to restrict ourselves to a few subscriptions. And, with the new web-accessible catalog and site, we’ll be strongly encouraging zine creators to share their work with us so we can continue building the collection.”

Zines have been a part of the library’s collection since at least 1997. Julie Bartel, a staff member, wrote the book “From A to Zine – Building A Winning Zine Collection in Your Library.” And, the zines in the Salt Lake City collection represent a rich, diverse range of geography, politics, personal interests, religion, spirituality, hobbies, sports, art, literature, culture, and other topics which accumulate seemingly into infinity.

Zines have a venerable history, stretching back to at least Shakespeare’s days. In fact, Thomas Paine’s famous “Common Sense” pamphlet was essentially a zine. Some popular culture historians have called zines a de facto critique of commodified culture, highbrow perceptions of taste and aesthetics, and the gatekeepers of cultural production – editors, producers, publishers, and agents.

“Factors such as money, status, and even talent are not limiting to the ability to create a zine,” Anna Leventhal, a Montreal librarian with broad experience in alternative press collections, wrote. “The story that ‘vibrates within’ each work, whether it is about feminism or foosball, is not only about that individual but about their claiming a space from which to speak, and the radical nature of such a position-taking to extend beyond the scope of the individual into the social sphere.”

The next post samples a few zines that embrace the medium’s unique character.