8 Jan 2015

Zine Librarianship and the infinite madness

Picture courtesy of Mick O Dwyer

Guest Post by Mick O’Dwyer who supports his zine habit by moonlighting as an Assistant Librarian in Maynooth University.

With zines, appearances are often deceiving. If you take one thing away from reading this blog post, remember that!

I am a zine librarian and librarian zinester. You are probably thinking something like, “What’s a zine”, or “aren’t they from the ‘80’s”? I will do my best to allay your fears.

Picture Courtesy of Mick O Dwyer

Zines (as in magaZINE), are independent self-published, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) magazines, created out of a desire for self-expression rather than profit, and distributed in small runs.  They’re highly personal, can be on any subject imaginable, and are made with an eclectic variety of materials, such as twine, string and glitter. Zines are awake and immediate in a manner that is unlike any other medium. To me, they are powerful tools used to represent the underrepresented in society. They offer a platform to people on the fringes, whose voices are ignored or misrepresented in mainstream publications and traditional libraries.


However, zines have often proved problematic for librarians and have been disregarded in many libraries for a number of reasons; they contain minimal metadata, have erratic publishing schedules, are ephemeral in nature and often proudly flaunt copyright. As they are free from editorial restraint, zines can contain content that is unique, creative and thought-provoking, whilst also being objectionable, agenda-driven or poorly structured.


Picture Courtesy of Mick O Dwyer


Despite making a zine when I was in school, and spending countless hours reading zines and free-sheets in record stores, it was only when I was doing my MLIS in 2012/2013 that I actively got involved in the Irish ‘zine scene’.  For my Capstone project, myself and six other librarians decided to do something a bit different and revitalise the only dedicated zine archive in Ireland - The Forgotten Zine Archive.  We thought it would be interesting to study them as they have been habitually over-looked from an information management stand-point. We also thought it would be great to examine them in a non-traditional library setting. Independent zine archives often have close associations with anti-establishment countercultures that some establishment libraries feel the need to distance themselves from. Our archive is run out of Seomra Spraoi; an anti-capitalist, autonomous social centre, frequented by anarchists, socialists and a range of different groups.


Picture Courtesy of Mick O Dwyer

Established in 2004 by Irish zinester (zine maker) Ciáran Walsh, the Forgotten Zine Archive’s main role has been as a curated memory institution, where Irish and international zines are collected, preserved and made available to the public. Its contents now stand at around 2000 items, ranging in date from 1978 until now, and covering topics on a diverse range of subjects; from riot grrrl to Bray Wanderers FC, from anarcho-punk to cryptozoology. Tom Maher and I now co-curate the archive on a voluntary basis.

Picture Courtesy of Mick O Dwyer


Like zines themselves, zine librarianship is a niche market. Demand is low and you constantly seem to be fighting for legitimacy; from your friends, from other librarians, and even, on occasion from yourself.  But every moment of self-doubt, every hour spent cataloguing in a cold archive on a Saturday afternoon, or Tuesday evening fund-raising meeting is more than worth it. It has been fulfilling, rewarding, and ultimately where I found my voice as a librarian.

Zines and zine librarianship or both inherently DIY. You have opportunities to be creative in ways you may never be offered in traditional libraries. We created our own taxonomy of subject headings, specific to our archive as we felt other subject heading taxonomies were surprisingly limited in capturing the content of our collection. We consulted members of the zine community to do this, engaging with diverse groups of people who often operate outside traditional library user groups.

Picture Courtesy of Mick O Dwyer


In August 2014 we helped organise the Dublin Zine Fair with a group of local Dublin artists, and ran an exhibition on the contents of the archive in the Centre for Creative Practices. Both events really highlighted the benefits of seeking alternatives to the current ‘corporate vending to library’ paradigm, showcasing an array of talented local artists.

Picture Courtesy of Mick O Dwyer

Radical, independent archives such as the Forgotten Zine Archive are important.  It’s important that libraries play a role in supporting and promoting local independent publishing. It’s also important that librarians encourage people to write and make and use their imaginations. By making and distributing zines, the zine community is creating its own historical records. It is shining a light on undocumented aspects of society that might otherwise go unnoticed or be forgotten. Zine archives preserve the parts of history that do not make it into books or blogs. They provide links to disenfranchised communities and offer them a platform so their collective voice is given extra weight.

That is vital.

Mick O’Dwyer and Tom Maher will be presenting a parallel session on zine librarianship at the 2015 Academic and Special Libraries Conference, February 26th and 27th. The presentation is entitled “A community involvement and collaborative case study: the Forgotten Zine Archive”.


7 comments:

  1. Thanks for this post Mick. I must admit I love the idea of a fanzine archive and I really admire what ye are doing with the Forgotten Zine Archive. I particularly realised the social / cultural / historical value and significance of fanzines when curating the Sir Henrys @UCC Library last summer. We were loaned so many fanzines and I spent hours looking through them as historical documents. So many of them were an alternative guide to Cork in the late 80s / early 90s. They were a guide to a hidden underground Cork. Keep up the amazing work. And next time I'm in Dublin I expect a guided tour... :)

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  2. Thanks Martin. I'm a big fan of the work being done by yourself and UCC on Sir Henry's. I'll definitely give you a tour of the archive next time you are around. In the mean-time we will have a pop-up zine archive at the A&SL conference next month. Will unearth a few Cork zines from the collection and bring them along!

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  3. Hey Mick -- many thanks for your post. I'm most impressed by your collective effort in bringing back to life, maintaining, describing and providing a space for those zines. You mention access, distribution and the importance of creating a lasting historical record. Have you and Tom considered to curate some particularly interesting items (along the lines of themes etc.) and then digitise those? On the back of this work, you could then create an online open access archive/library hosted on an open source content management system. If you consider going down this route, another interesting twist would be to further increase value and spread through the introduction of machine-readable data representations via RDF.

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  4. Great project! Two Cork classics from the early/mid-90s spring to mind. Choc-a-Bloc which was mostly music, and No More Plastic Pitches a very very funny Cork City FC zine.

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    1. hi Dowtcha, grand Cork name. When we were doing the Henrys expo we were loaned so many of the Cork zines. Full run of Choc a Bloc actually. Had so much great fun reading back over them. Happy Days!!!

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    2. Hey Dowtcha, we have a few copies of Choc-a-bloc in the zine archive alright. Good zine! Haven't read 'No more plastic pitches", sounds great. I am a big fan of the Sultans of Ping song of the same name!

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  5. Hey Alexander,
    Thanks for the comment. Thats a good question! Digitising zines is certainly something we have thought about. It is a bit of a hot topic at the moment within the zine community. Some people are for it (it increases access to zines, helps to preserve material and promotes the medium), while others are totally opposed to the idea (zines are created by hand and meant to be physically shared. As they can be highly personal and generally distributed in small runs to like-minded souls, some members of the zine community are uncomfortable with having their work in an archive, even in an autonomous social centre like ours. To put something online for a worldwide audience might be completely against the creator’s intentions. Plus, as so many zinesters operate under aliases, obtaining permission from them to digitise zines can be a very time consuming task).
    Even within the zine community in Dublin there is disagreement over whether or not it should be done. I am not opposed to digitising a selection of zines for something like an online curated exhibition, but at the moment finding the time to do so would be an issue. Getting the physical copies preserved and catalogued, while promoting the medium is our main priority. Only two of us operate the archive (with help from some members of the Dublin Zine Collective) on a voluntary basis. We both have day-to-day library jobs, and have been lucky to get a steady stream of donations which has kept us busy.
    We did have a physical exhibition last year in the CFCP which ran for almost two weeks. It was a great success and personally I would be more inclined to do something like that again. I can’t speak for Tom. If we were to digitise the whole archive it would be good to get some capstone students involved, could be a great project for them.

    Mick

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