Zines have a curious relationship with libraries. For the uninitiated, zines—pronounced like zeens—are typically self-published, self-distributed, low-budget pamphlets that have historically served to platform communities outside the mainstream. “Zine” is short for “fanzine,” and most historical narratives of zines tend to suggest that the form originated with science fiction fanzines in the first half of the twentieth century. But the aesthetic traits we tend to most readily associate with zines in a modern context—scrappy, subcultural, and intentionally amateurish—can be most obviously linked to rise of punk rock in the 1970s, and its evolution into hardcore punk in the ‘80s. For punks, zines formed a connective subcultural tissue, giving it a platform that would not have been available in mainstream media forms. But while zines have strong ties to punk culture, they’ve served as a mouthpiece for all kinds of cultural undergrounds and social outcasts. As Stephen Duncombe beautifully puts it in Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of American Culture,
[Zines] are independent and localized, coming out of cities, suburbs and small towns across the USA, assembled on kitchen tables. They celebrate the everyperson in a world of celebrity, losers in a society that rewards the best and the brightest… [Defining] themselves against a society predicated on consumption, zinesters privilege the ethic of DIY, do-it-yourself: make your own culture and stop consuming what is made for you (2).
In one sense, zines might seem inimical to the associations that the general public might have with academic libraries: they’re cheaply made and therefore difficult to preserve; they typically don’t have cataloging-friendly characteristics like spines or ISBNs; and, distinct from the milieu of academic publishing, they tend to resist any fantasy of epistemological authority. Nonetheless, librarians tend to love them. Hundreds of libraries across the United States maintain zine collections; they’re an increasingly popular instructional tool in academic libraries—even at Cornell (check out our LibGuide!); and librarians have developed innovative schemas specifically designed for cataloging zines. In a contemporary context in which digital communication is at the whims of multinational tech corporations—at constant risk of surveillance, and of intellectual theft via generative AI—the print object perhaps has a new allure.
Zines are probably best engaged with in a physical context, and Cornell Library has you covered—check out the zine collection on display in Mann Library, or make an appointment to view some of the myriad zines in Rare and Manuscript Collections documenting everything from Riot Grrrl to witchcraft. In honor of Pride Month, though, I want to highlight one of my favorite online zine resources, the Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP). Comprising around 500 digitized zines—as a well as a smaller number of flyers and other pieces of ephemera—QZAP strives to “to establish a ‘living history’ archive of past and present queer zines and to encourage current and emerging zine publishers to continue to create.” While it includes zines from the 1970s to the 2020s, the 1990s and the 2000s are the archive’s most heavily represented decades; of particular note are its zines on queer punk and “homocore,” as well as its collection of ephemera relating to ACT UP, the grassroots activist organization founded in the late ‘80s in response to governmental inaction towards the AIDS epidemic.
While QZAP is searchable by keyword and has an advanced search feature, the archive is small enough that browsing is the most expedient (and fun) way to make new discoveries. The landing page allows for browsing by author, location, and year—among other categories—and once you find a zine that looks interesting, the “keywords” section of the individual catalog records encourage deep exploration.
Given the fundamentally horizontal nature of zine culture—unlike peer-reviewed scholarship, it’s not shaped around a stratified “canon” or system of prestige—this aspect of QZAP is particularly valuable. For example, while looking at Homopunk World #6—a fascinating document of queer punk culture—I clicked on the “gay marriage” keyword, which yielded several other zines that took a critical, anti-assimilationist approach to gay marriage. Importantly, this tool foregrounds the way in which zines—like all forms of knowledge production—are not made within a social vacuum. Rather, they’re produced through a networked conversation with other thinkers, creators, and socio-cultural forces.
While zines continue to be a vibrant creative form, they arguably serve a different role now than they did in eras that predated contemporary digital technologies—whether artificial intelligence, social media, or the internet itself—and one of the most appealing aspects of QZAP is the breadth of topics its archive represents. It includes zines on home ownership for punks; on HIV testing in the foster care system; on herbalism for trans women. There’s even a lesbian coloring book, and a zine called Emily Dickinson Was a Fucking Ninja. Maybe you’ll find something in QZAP that will inspire you to make a zine of your own—as the punks like to say, “D.I.Y. or die!”
If you’re an instructor interested in incorporating zines into the classroom, or if you’re a student looking to research zines, consider making an appointment with a Cornell librarian. We’d love to help!
If you’re interested in purchasing some zines from queer creators, here’s a few excellent zine distros that you might consider checking out: Portland Button Works; Wasted Ink Zine Distro; and Brown Recluse (zines by and for BIPOC creators).