From A To Zine: Building A Winning Zine Collection In Your Library

by Julie Bartel

Libraries eager to serve the underserved teen-to-twenty-year-old market can make the library a cool place to hang out. All it takes are zines, according to the author, young adult librarian Julie Bartel. Zines and alternative press materials provide a unique bridge to appeal to disenfranchised youth, alienated by current collections. For librarians unfamiliar with the territory, or anxious to broaden their collection, veteran zinester Bartel establishes the context, history, and philosophy of zines, then ushers readers through an easy, do-it-yourself guide to creating a zine collection, including both print and electronic zines. While zines have their unique culture, they are also important within broader discussions of intellectual freedom and the Library Bill of Rights. Teen and young adult librarians, high school media specialists, and academic, reference, and adult services librarians will uncover answers to questions aboutthis new and growing literary Bartel shares these lessons and more from a major urban library zine collection, as well as a comprehensive directory of zine resources in this one-stop, one-of-a-kind guide.

Genres: Nonfiction, Library Science, Librarianship, Books About Books

152 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

About the author

Julie is a writer and librarian living in Salt Lake City, UT.

Author interviews for YALSA's The Hub can be found at http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/tag/o...

Reviews

[Amy Layton · Rating 5 out of 5]

From A to Zine was instrumental to me this term.  My "committee" in class decided to make a makerspace in which to also collocate our zine collection.  This book provided me with valuable information, sources, and suggestions, and offered a dialogue about best practices about including zines in your library.

Bartel discusses some difficult conversations surrounding zine collections--such as purchasing and having to create records from scratch--and some easier conversations such as marketing and event planning.  

If you're so much as thinking about creating a zine collection, get your hands on this book!  It provides extra resources in the back, and it's a great start for reading about what you'll have to think when drafting a proposal.  It was a quick, easy read chock-full of information.

Review cross-listed here!

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great starting point and an extremely helpful guide for librarians thinking/planning to add a zine collection to their libraries (and especially their public libraries). As I fall into that exact category, I really did appreciate this book. It goes over how to propose the idea to admin, budgetary and cataloging concerns, what to consider for the collection policy, and even the importance of zines to the library and to the community.

However, after 20 years, there are quite a few resources that are out of date and many broken links listed (which is really no fault of the book itself). I would love to have an updated version, but I did find this useful as is and definitely recommend it to any public librarians looking to introduce a zine collection to their libraries.

[Marti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful, interesting and inspiring.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most enjoyable books I've read for school, the moreso because it was so wonderfully nostalgic for me to read. I published a zine from 1989-1993 or so, and it turns out my zine is now housed in the New York State Library's Factsheet Five Collection. I recall that, at the time, my mother the librarian was horrified by the vast amounts of published material showing up in my mailbox that no one could get access to through any library. Well, one library-generation later, there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of zine library collections across the US and Canada, and even some further afield as well. It turns out that neither blogging nor the Internet-at-large has been able to kill the zine scene - there's just something special about making something physical and sending it out to interested (and interesting) people in the mail that keeps it going. The book has a creative and off-beat style, but manages to give good collection management advice to the beginning Zine Librarian. It's both fun and informative, and appears to be dating well (better, in fact, than the various Factsheet Five publications of my own zining days). It goes further than that, though, and manages to transmit enough enthusiasm about zines, libraries, and zines in libraries to be positively inspiring.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read! Very inspiring non-fiction work about curating alternative collections (specifically zines in this case - but some of the hurdles may be similar if there was a different type of alt. material), marketing new collections to current patrons and non-patrons, programming, and responsiveness to the needs and feedback of the community. I would love to read an update to this work by Bartel about the current status of zine collections in American libraries.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tracy read this while setting up a zine library at the University of Oregon and since it was around, I went ahead and gave it a look see.
I was a bit miffed at some of her explanations, definitions, and ideas about zines, but I'm fairly dogmatic when it comes to how I think of zines and what they should be. As for the collecting bit, hey, I'm not a librarian.

[Shanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super helpful.

[dearlittledeer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still working on my MLIS but reading this really makes me want to build a zine collection -- wherever I end up working!

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice guide to launching a zine collection in a library. Focuses on public libraries, but a decent how-to nonetheless.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great!

[emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the most helpful books I've read in a long time… this is going to be so helpful this summer as I attempt to do this?! ^.^