On Saturday we attended the London Zine Symposium to meet zinesters, chat to those running distro stalls, and to get our hands on the start of our zine collection.
A big thanks to everyone on Saturday who donated zines to our collection, offered recommendations, and expressed infectious enthusiasm about the Stuart Hall Library and our new zine collection. It was an inspiring yet tiring day and thanks to all the other zine librarians on the day who offered vital words of wisdom and were willing to share their expertise and resources. We managed to speak to some wonderful distros and attended some fantastic zine readings by our favourite zinesters including Charlotte Cooper and Patrick Staff (from Ricochet! Ricochet! zines and distro).
We managed to pick up a few new zines to kickstart our collection:
Here are two zines from Other Asias: The Jinah Papers and Tea Journeys which we are pleased to add to our collection. It was fantastic to find out about Other Asias work and connections to publications such as Nonel and Vovel (also available in the Stuart Hall Library). We are hoping to get many more publications by Other Asias in the Stuart Hall Library.
Throughout the day we spoke to zinesters, distros, zine librarians, and zine readers looking for zines to buy or recommended titles of zines specifically in relation to race, ethnicity and identity. Thanks to everyone we spoke to who gave their recommendations and forwarded us details of relevant distros. We are now chasing up these titles. When we asked zinesters and distros for these types of zines, most people recommended Race Revolt…
Here is the latest issue now available in the Stuart Hall Library. We are hoping to work with Race Revolt for their upcoming issue and all previous issues will be made available in the library.
The London Zine Symposium was a great way to mark our initiation into the zine community and to have these discussions regarding zines and identity as we begin to plan our zine collection within the library.
We are still looking for zine donations and probably most importantly we are continuing to ask you for recommendations of zine titles and distros. Our main focus is on zines relating to issues of race, ethnicity, and identity. But our zines will also incorporate themes of gender, sexuality, politics, music, and popular culture. The Stuart Hall Library is considered a specialist arts library so a large portion of our zine collection will also focus on the visual arts, particularly international zines. If you have any titles you would like to recommend to us or if you are interested in donating then please let us know in the comments section of this blog, or let us know by emailing us library@iniva.org
Next stop, Zine Fest at the Women’s Library, Saturday 12th June 2010. See you there!