Before Blogs, There were Zines

In 1992, Mike Gunderloy, the former editor of Factsheet Five, issued a press release announcing his intention of donating his huge collection of zines to a library. Gunderloy wanted to give his collection to a library that would not only preserve it, but make an effort to get people interested in studying those contemporary, underground, antiestablishment, and often ephemeral products of self-publishing known as "zines."
"Our library is right across the river from where Mike lives, so we got real excited," recalled Billie Aul, senior librarian, manuscripts and special collections section, at the New York State Library in Albany. "We were the first one there and got the collection."
The Factsheet Five collection at the New York State Library occupies 300 cubic feet of shelf space, includes between 10,000 and 20,000 titles, and is the biggest and most comprehensive collection of its kind in the world. "Mike got copies of zine that were being published by all kinds of obscure groups in the 1980s," Aul explained. "It's a phenomenal collection."
The Factsheet Five collection is also an acquisition that reflects a trend in librarianship. In addition to the New York State Library, a number of libraries across the country are beginning to collect, preserve, and make zines available for researchers, including DePaul University, Bowling Green State University, Michigan State University, Washington State University, and the San Francisco Public Library.
Chris Dodge, a cataloger at the Hennepin County (Minn.) Library and an expert on the alternative press, remains skeptical that the library profession is making a concerted effort to preserve zines, but he added, "Any effort to diversity collections of nontraditional material—for example, zines, comics and graphic material—is heartening."
No one can really define the term "zine," say zine curators and experts, but such publications share a number of characteristics. They have offbeat, frequently provocative, and often weird names, such as Baby Fat, Diseased Pariah News and Holy Titclamps. They lampoon, attack, parody, entertain or instruct on virtually any imaginable aspect of our culture, from AIDS to poetry, dirt bikers, New Wave comics and the popular television show "Beverly Hills 90210."

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Or read what the zine editors recommend on ZineBook.com.

Comments

[Mike Gunderloy]

And after zines, there are blogs. I'm now comfortably on the web at http://www.larkware.com - nothing to do with the alternative press these days, but on the other hand, keeping up a blog doesn't threaten to shove me out of my house with accumulated paper.