Zines are important in archives for a number of reasons. First of all, they represent an important primary source of information for future historians. They usually come from subcultures that are poorly documented in the larger culture. Furthermore, unlike the traditional print media, they represent an unmediated rendition of people's experiences in a particular place and time distributed to a significant (albeit small) audience. Secondly, in a time when writing communities are increasingly digital ( e.g. blogs, myspace, facebook), the print culture of the zine world is unique in its sociology. People make zines, trade them with others, write letters, and meet other like minded people. The zine genre is almost as well known for its creation of community as it is for its contribution of physical documents.
Within the context of lgbt archives, the theme of building community is an important one. However, the traditional method of cataloging and housing zines (as monographs or serials) does little to preserve the context out of which the documents were created. Despite this, the culture of community still plays an important role and overlaps into archives preserving zines. This panel will present the views of queer zine collecting in academic as well as non-traditional archives and libraries. We will discuss the ways that the diy zine communities overlap into these collections, as well as the ways the larger parent institution shapes the type of community involvement.
I'll be at Pratt Institute on April 9, 2008 to talk about Radical Reference, the Barnard Zine Collection, and general topics of library activism.
Event:
Pratt Institute library school talk, April 9, 2008.
Abstract:
This is about activism in your library and in your life, focusing on Radical Reference and the Barnard Library Zine Collection and hoping that session participants will feel empowered to develop projects and collections in their libraries and lives. Romel Espinel invited me on behalf of SILSSA.
This workshop will introduce skills to novice and veteran media makers alike, encouraging them to 'research like a librarian,' providing tips on how to find and recognize appropriate resources for researching and fact checking their stories. The presenters will be happy to adapt this workshop to whomever is in the room, but the impetus for proposing it is sharing skills with those newer to advanced research and critical thinking. However, people who are already confident in their research skills will undoubtedly learn some things, too. The facilitators can field questions on fact checking and research, but also on the mysteries of tagging, RSS feeds and the like. Slides and handouts available from Radical Reference.
Ann Sparanese and I are speaking at two of Deirdre Stam's LIU LIS classes on Tuesday, March 4, 2008. We're offering a Pu Pu Platter of library activist projects from the local to the global.
Co-presenter:
Ann Sparanese
Event:
Deirdre Stam's LIS classes at LIU/The Palmer School
Abstract:
We will spend approximately 2.5 minutes on each of these topics, alternating speakers:
Local public library--collections, Library Bill of Rights, intellectual freedom, community analysis
It's now been three weeks since the Progressive Library Skillshare in Pittsburgh, so my report back will not do justice to the event, I'm afraid. I'm just going to list the highlights, since too much time has passed for me to produce a thoughtful narrative.
Here are the slides from my talk at the Progressive Library Skillshare in Pittsburgh, PA on Saturday, September 7, 2007. I am honored to be on the bill with Sandy Berman, Tom Twiss, and a bunch of folks I haven't met yet.
Event:
Progressive Library Skillshare, Pittsburgh
Abstract:
This is about activism in your library and in your life, focusing on Radical Reference and the Barnard Library Zine Collection and hoping that session participants will feel empowered to develop projects and collections in their libraries and lives.
SHARP Conference panel, "Grrrls in the Library: the Collections and Preservation of Feminist Zines." My talk, "Self-Publication with Punk Rock Ideals: Zines ≠ Vanity Press Publications." Minneapolis, MN, July 13, 2007.
Zines are self-published, but the motivation behind their publication is different than that driving many vanity press and chapbook authors. The principles of anarchism and punk rock community are fundamental to zines, not just as the cultures that birthed them in their current incarnation, but also as what separates them from other self-publications. By collecting and preserving zines, the non-music primary sources of punk rock, librarians are documenting these movements in the participants’ own voices—the voices of those too young, too politically radical, too crusty, and/or too bad mannered to appeal to the corporate media. It is important to note that zine producers are not only people who have been relegated to the margins but also people who have chosen to claim the margins. In contrast to most writers, many zine producers might choose to reject an offer from corporate publishing house. Why let someone else control what you can say, when you can do it yourself? This presentation will address the politics and cultural motivations of zine publication and contrast them with other types of self-publication. Focusing specifically on materials from Barnard College’s open-stack zine collection that uses riot grrrl and other third wave feminist zines to enhance its research-oriented Women’s Studies book collection, this paper will go on to explore why zines belong in established library collections.
Part of "Grrrls in the Library: the Collections and Preservation of Feminist Zines" panel.
Note the "handout" is actually the paper, not the handout.
