Hope your new year has been off to a great start! We have an exciting announcement to share: the 2023 Zine Librarian unConference (ZLuC) will be held in San Francisco! For those who don’t know about ZLuC –
What: ZLuC is an inspirational, informative, and fun gathering of people who care deeply about zines and their ability to change lives for the better.
Where: the University of San Francisco (and hopefully other venues!)
Who: Everyone is welcome! The primary audience is workers and volunteers from academic, public, and special libraries, as well as community-oriented independent libraries and archives. If you’re interested in zines in libraries and archives, we’re happy to have you join in the fun.
We are excited to announce that ZineCat Project Manager Lauren Kehoe and Anchor Archive Librarian Amanda Stevens will be presenting at the ARLIS/NA Conference on ZineCat and Zine Thesaurus this spring. Read more about their session below.
Image Credit: Art Libraries Society of North America
Community Tools for Radical Collections: Building a Subject Thesaurus and Union Catalog for Zines
Zines are rich research materials, increasingly being collected across libraries. Perhaps because zines exist in counter-cultural spaces, they were first collected and circulated by independent zine libraries. This hybrid environment of zine collections translates to dispersed and varied mechanisms for access and description. Descriptions and metadata, and thus discovery of zines, are strewn across library catalogs, archival finding aids, standalone databases, spreadsheets, print handouts, and proprietary online platforms. This multiplicity poses impediments to finding and using zines in aggregate. Furthermore, zines are radical publications that defy rules, often lacking metadata and not fitting into standardized systems for cataloging and classification.
Members of the zine library community have been working collaboratively to build their own shared tools for improving management of, and access to, zines and zine collections. These tools include ZineCat, a union catalog for zines, and a zine subject thesaurus for alternative description. This presentation will provide an overview of both projects, how they have worked alongside each other and will continue to grow together, and how attendees can contribute to and participate in them.
ZineCat is a centralized database of zine catalog records, and a searchable database of holdings information, that will provide digital content when available. It will save a researcher’s time by collocating metadata from many disparate sources and will allow under-resourced zine libraries to copy and share catalog records.
The Zine Thesaurus is a hierarchical thesaurus of subject terms that are more accessible, current, and radical than standard subject thesauri such as Library of Congress Subject Headings. It is used in zine library catalogs and collections around the world and will be integrated into ZineCat. It was developed by an independent zine library in Canada and is updated and maintained by a dispersed group of zine librarians, with mechanisms for broad community feedback on choice of terms and contributions of new terms.
Centering on the ZineCat and thesaurus examples, we will provide an overview of the projects, how they were developed, where they’re headed, and how they use open source platforms to aggregate open data. We will discuss challenges in sustaining collaborative, international projects, independent of institutional support and how we grapple with the problems inherent in sharing information online (i.e. with respect to zine author anonymity, etc.).
ZineCat and the thesaurus are creator-centric projects because many members of the zine libraries community are zine makers, as well as zine custodians, though the catalog serves researchers and pleasure readers, as well as zine makers. This presentation will end with a call to welcome new contributors and contributions, as the projects are still in active development!
We have just updated our page on ZineLibraries.info. Check it out for a quick summary of what we’ve been up to. For those of you who are unfamiliar with ZineLibraries, it is a zine libraries interest group maintained by a collective of people interested in all aspects of zine libraries. It has been going strong since 2007! Subscribe to their newsletters to stay up to date with all things zine-library-related.
We’ve been thinking about new designs for our website and are currently working with HaiDev on an accessibility audit for our webpage.
Mock-ups for a new website layout. Which do you prefer?
We would greatly appreciate your feedback on what you would like to see on the ZineCat website. How can we better serve your zine search needs? Check out some of our designs and please feel free to add your input in the comments below.
We recently submitted a grant application to the National Endowment for the Humanities and wanted to share with our readers the project narrative for ZineCat. Take a look below to learn more about our evolving project, or you can check out a copy of our application that we’ve shared on Shared AuthorityVol. 2.5here.
Introduction
The Zine Union Catalog (ZineCat) is a shared catalog dedicated to zines. A zine, short for fanzine or magazine, is a DIY publishing medium traditionally used by subculture communities for sharing their lives and knowledge. A shared catalog is a resource where libraries can mingle cataloging and holdings information. Zines are primary sources for humanities, social sciences, and other fields, but due to the diverse standards and practices among libraries, archives, and community organizations that collect and maintain them, accessing zines through traditional research discovery systems has been challenging. ZineCat empowers researchers to discover zine holdings by searching a single catalog, helps librarians copy catalog records to eliminate duplication of effort, and facilitates lending. ZineCat serves educators, researchers, librarians, archivists, zine makers, and anyone with an interest in zines.
Catalog records for zine titles (descriptive metadata), which give identifying (title, creator name(s), production date and location) and contextual information (subjects, genres, abstracts, biographical and historical details)
Holdings information (details about libraries that hold specific issues)
Digitized and/or digital content when available
Developed by Jenna Freedman (Barnard College) and Lauren Kehoe (NYU) in our MA Digital Humanities (MADH) program at the City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNYGC), ZineCat’s prototype combined into a Collective Access catalog3 thirty records each from three libraries with different metadata schema: MARC, Dublin Core, and an 18-column spreadsheet. The prototype has grown to include almost 34,000 zines from eight collections with more ingests in progress.
The zine library community values cooperation and intentionality, so we need to match the prototype growth in concert with improved infrastructure and participant collaboration systems. NEH funding creates space for deliberation, care, and clarity as we unite our catalogers and contributors in person. The grant will enable us to accomplish this necessary next step.
Significance
Zines provide firsthand accounts of social, political, economic, and cultural experiences and insight that, unlike journalism and academic scholarship, are not filtered through gatekeepers or formal editorial structures. They are produced in small runs and are often distributed by the author(s). Zines facilitate knowledge production and dissemination within marginalized, racialized, and socially alternative communities that have been overlooked or excluded by cultural heritage institutions. They are used as primary sources by students, journalists, scholars, and anyone interested in material culture, print culture, and book history. Topics represented in zines, zine culture, and zine topics, include, but are not limited to: girlhood, music fandom, homophobia in high school, people of color in punk, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, midwifery, the evolution of desktop publishing, self-publishing as activism, reactions to 9/11, fat activism, and pandemic life.
Even before they were called zines or fanzines, self-publications were a mechanism for people holding marginalized identities to share their experiences with people of similar or questioning identities, and others. The 1926 Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists by Wallace Thurman, et al. and Vice Versa, launched by Lisa Ben (an anagram for lesbian) in 1947, are forerunners. Zine movements have been accurately characterized as heavily populated by white people, despite the contributions of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) creators throughout zine history, but in recent years zine culture has become significantly more representative. For example, the NYC Feminist Zinefest, held at Barnard College annually since 2014 (on hold due to Covid), has had a steady grown in BIPOC tabler presence each year. In 2020, more than 50 percent of the tables were to be staffed by individuals and groups of color.
Perhaps because zines exist in counter cultural spaces, they were first collected and circulated by independent zine libraries. By the early 21st century, public libraries, special collections, and academic library workers began collecting zines as research resources and as part of leisure reading collections. This hybrid environment of zine collections translates to dispersed and varied mechanisms for access. Zine descriptions and metadata, and thus discovery of zines, are strewn across library catalogs, archival finding aids, standalone databases, spreadsheets, print handouts, and proprietary online platforms. This multiplicity poses impediments to finding and using zines in aggregate for research, teaching, and learning. ZineCat saves a reader’s time by collocating metadata from these disparate sources.
Zine librarians field personal and research questions from people looking to find themselves represented on library shelves, to discover others who share cultural shorthands, or who have experienced the same joys and torments. ZineCat will host holdings from any and all collections that wish to participate and will become an essential resource for answering lay and scholarly inquiries.
By harmonizing metadata rather than standardizing it, ZineCat allows the zine community to preserve its diversity and leave control over represented words, images, and ideas to the original makers, a hallmark of zine culture.” Control over one’s words, images, and ideas is a hallmark of zine culture. For example, in the appendix, we have included a table of descriptors of one zine held at six different libraries. Each record for Doris by Cindy Ovenrack Crabb is notably different from the others. Some contain narratives in addition to basic metadata. The metadata do not always agree, even with regard to the author’s name. Doris, a serial with several distinctly titled issues, is variously cataloged as a serial and a monograph. For a zine like Doris, ZineCat will serve as a hub for information, connecting but not necessarily overlaying serial, monograph, and finding aid records.
It’s been a busy few weeks with the ALA (American Library Association) Conference and Zine Pavilion last month. At the conference, Lauren gave a presentation on the Zine Union Catalog and garnered a lot of interest in the project as well as questions around metadata. For this occasion, we also produced new issue of Shared Authority. Volume 2.5 (along with all our previous issues) can be found on our public Google Drive.
This summer, we are also prioritizing accessibility. ZineCat is currently doing a web audit with HaiDev (with many thanks to Eric, who is project managing this) with the goal of making improvements to our site. We have also been producing other formats for our zines (audible and plain text), which can also be accessed on the public Google Drive. All three issues of Shared Authority are available as scanned pdfs, as well as in audible and plain text files.
If you have any other suggestions on improvements we can implement to make ZineCat more accessible to all, please let us know. Feel free to send us an email at zinecatproject AT gmail.com. We always appreciate your feedback.
Back/Cover of the lasted issue, Shared Authority v. 2.5
Happy International Zine Month! Join us for the 2022 Zines & Libraries Conference that starts tomorrow. Our very own Jenna Freedman will be speaking on Friday at 11am PST.
What: The Zines & Libraries Conference is a two-day virtual conference that will gather together librarians, zine artists and educators to learn about all things zines! Presenters will go over zine history, cataloging, starting a collection as well as provide tools, resources and tips on how to successfully integrate zines into libraries and instruction.
Who: Anyone interested in zines, libraries, zine librarianship and organizing zine events!
Where: This is a virtual conference, with nine separate virtual sessions, each 50 minutes long. All sessions will be hosted virtually through Zoom. Closed captioning will be provided. Please register down below.
When: July 7th-8th, 2022 (Thursday and Friday), 11am-3pm PST
This conference is made possible through the John F. Helmer Professional Development Grant through the Orbis Cascade Alliance consortium and organized by librarians Maria Cunningham (Oregon Health and Science University) and Ann “A’misa” Matsushima Chiu (Reed College).
Please email questions about registration or accommodations to Elizabeth Duell eduell@orbiscascade.org
NYU Accessibility & Accommodations Librarian Lauren Kehoe has contributed a chapter, The Zine Union Catalog, to the December 2021 ALA publication Zines in Libraries: Selecting, Purchasing, and Processing, edited by Lauren DeVoe and Sara Duff. The Zine Union Catalog (aka ZineCat) facilitates discoverability of zine holdings in the U.S. and beyond by searching a single catalog interface.
Lauren received a 2021 NYU Digital Humanities Seed Grant to continue developing the Union Catalog prototype with her project partner, Jenna Freedman, Librarian for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Curator of the Zine Library at Barnard.
– Lauren Kehoe Publishes on Building a Zine Union Catalog, NYU Libraries Communication
Text Analysis with a Zine Corpus- NYCDH Week 2/10/22
by Vita Kurland
In February I had the pleasure of attending the Text Analysis with a Zine Corpus workshop hosted by by Filipa Calado (CUNY GC Ph.D student), Jenna Freedman (Barnard Zine Library curator), and Miranda Johnson (University of Wisconsin-Madison, MLIS student) for NYCDH week. Utilizing seventeen zines from the digitized collections at the Barnard Zine Library, the project seeks to make zines available for text analysis, solidifying their place in Digital Humanities scholarship.
The workshop was both an introduction to the process of building the corpus as well as an introduction to Voyant-Tools, the software used for the textual analysis. The presenters discussed the significance of zines and engaged participants in the ethics and steps of creating a corpus highlighting the works of zine creators from minoritized identities. In creating the catalog, the team experienced challenges with transcription and discussed the responsibility of communication around consent to digitize the selected texts. Using Voyant-Tools and a pre-written Python script, the presenter’s discussed the possibilities of text analysis and visualization as a means to revolutionize zine scholarship pushing the boundaries of exploration beyond the physical object.
So what is a zine corpus? A corpus is a collection or body of texts, in this case of zines from Barnard College’s Zine Library. Developing the corpus Calado, Freedman, and Johnson chose from a range of genres, and author identities to select a representative example of the zine catalog. The Barnard Zine Library collects zines on feminism and femme identity by people of all genders with an emphasis on zines by women of color. Once the body of texts was selected they were transcribed with a combination of manual labor and an OCR converter or “Optical Character Recognition,” a technology that recognizes text withinscanned documents and images.
What knowledge is gained using text analysis and visualization? Text analysis is a tool used in Digital Humanities scholarship as a means for scholars to read bodies of text in new ways by using machine learning to pick up on word frequency patterns in texts. Text analysis, often referred to as “distant reading” or “topic modeling,” provides new insight into textual patterns and features such as word frequency and approximate words. In contrast to close readings of texts, the use of computational tools enhances the study of texts in ways that an individual might not notice or even be capable of. For example how many times the word “feminist” might appear in a text and what the surrounding words.
Voyant-Tools software was used as part of the presentation to explore the zine corpus. Voyant is an open-source browser-based interface that analyzes any imported text. It allows users to upload a corpora and visualize patterns in various ways. For example, users can experiment with colorful word clusters, or “word clouds” that represent word frequency and visualize how specific words and phrases appear across texts in line graphs.
The questions posed by the workshop were: what new areas of research can be identified through this type of work and what is gained or lost when stepping away from the physical object (close reading)? These questions are important because zines are such ephemeral objects – so much is gained from experiencing zines physically. While information might be lost from not having the experience with the physical object, access to the zines as sources for information is greatly increased. As someone with minimal Digital Humanities experience I was excited to hear about this project because it bridges my understanding of zines as ephemeral DIY publications with the world of computational tools and data analysis. While I don’t have answers to these questions it was apparent when using Voyant-Tools to explore the corpus that there is much to be explored.
This project invites zine enthusiasts to explore the possibilities of text analysis and carves a space for zines in the larger sphere of the Digital Humanities and distant reading. We at ZineCat are excited to see how this project evolves and what insights can be gleaned from the textual analysis of zines.
![Index card titled "What is a Zine? [Star] My Definition:" with the definition: "For me a zine is not just a self-made and self-published booklet but it is also situated within DIY culture. This means it is non-profit, non-commercial, low-budget, and non-competitive. Topics and styles can vary but it's important that zines remain accessible, both to readers (everyone can afford to buy or trade them) and to writers (everyone can make them). Zine don't exist as little paper islands but they are connected and blossom within a mutually supportive zine community."](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/WbL9_mo5pQl3GSl3iIL1ZV5sFhM-MoLQlBzsjZWyLikVnT2x24odgAxIx1Qy70AGWNvqEOTSj8Q4P45tAItMSpSsLc05wtAx5obsjc8MuG-6XrIxR_MpgOwYU3TIG8b7ooGo4-2he_7g874)
