Last year I reported that the Denver Zine Library and the Papercut Zine Library were on hiatus. Boo! I admit, I cynically thought that was it for both of them, but happily I was mistaken. They both have reopened: Denver, Papercut. Yay!
I got news via Facebook and an email message that the Denver Zine Library will soon close for some period of time beginning next month.
It is with mixed emotions that we are announcing the temporary closure of the Denver Zine Library (DZL) which has been housed at The Other Side Arts on Platte St. for the past few years. There are several factors contributing to this temporary closure that we’d like to share with you. We have often found ourselves struggling to meet the demands of rent expenses, making us recognize that we cannot sustainably maintain our current location. Our core group of board members have also been taking on the role of volunteers, consistently sharing the responsibility of staffing the DZL every weekend so that it can remain open. Unfortunately, we have seen very few visitors, and while we know there is community interest in having a zine library in Denver, we want to make sure those same community members are invested in both visiting/utilizing the DZL as well as telling others about this incredible resource.
I am in Poitiers, France for an International Zine Libraries conference. That's Poitiers, not Paris. There are other cities in France, you know! As the founder of the Fanzinothèque here said in our meeting yesterday, the Fanzinothèque perhaps survived because it is here, not Paris, "Fuck Paris." Following is some basic info about the participating institutions.
And of course like any decent organizers, at the end of the conference we did a go around where everyone said what they liked about the event and what could have made it better. And we set up some working groups to keep things going after the conference ended. I know it's morbid, but the term I learned to use for this exercise is post-mortem.
