Bott, Christie. “Zines—the Ultimate Creative Writing Project,” English Journal, 92, no. 2 (2002): 27-33.

Christie Bott’s engaging and energetic article on using zines in the classroom is unique in that Bott, unlike many of the other authors I’ve explored, is not a recovering riot grrrl or budding feminist. Bott is a veteran teacher with over 30 years classroom experience who, after discovering zines through a novel by Ellen Wittlinger, took a chance and included zines in her syllabus for the first time. Bott summarizes the steps she took to introduce zines to her students through a series of lessons, and the successes and challenges she met along the way. According to Bott, using zines to teach has been one of the “funnest’ things [she] has done,” and plans to expand her zine project to a full year endeavor in the future. This article is most valuable as an enthusiastic and persuasive story of one adventurous teacher and her work to keep the classroom interesting and engaging for her students by being open to new genres and new modes of learning.

Cruikshank, Wendy. “Fairy Tale ‘Zines.” Instructor. 111.6 (March 2002): 60-3.

This short piece on using self-published magazines as an assessment tool in the elementary classroom was one of the few resources I found which approached an actual lesson or unit plan. Cruikshank’s lesson plan is inter-disciplinary because it challenges students to demonstrate their understanding of plot and point of view as well as their prior knowledge of the conventions of magazine writing, layout and style. While Cruikshank is not concerned with the sort of zines in Barnard’s collection, her lesson plan for introducing self-publishing to very young students is an excellent model on which to build any media literacy lesson.

Daly, Brenda O. “Taking whiteness personally: Learning to teach testimonial reading and writing in the college literature classroom..” Pedagogy. 5.2 (Spring 2005): 213-246.

This comprehensive article on the teaching of race and cultural diversity in a college literature classroom is not specifically focused on zines or zine culture. Instead, Daly discusses how zines can be used an alternative form of assessment when asking students to reflect on highly personal or emotionally-charged material. The main focus of the article is on how Daly struggled to get her students to acknowledge and discuss cultural and racial bias in their own lives by assigning and discussing testimonial literature and challenging her students to write their own personal stories of their experiences. This work helped students to analyze and understand Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. At the end of their study of the novel, students were given two assessment choices; they could either write a testimonial exploring the construction of their own racial biases or they could create a zine exploring the power of media in the construction of racial bias. Twenty-two of twenty-six students chose to write the testimonial, while only four chose to create a zine. When comparing the two assessments, Daly noted that students creating zines tended to “advocate action more frequently” and “made fewer personal disclosures.” Daly’s article is a powerful discussion of a difficult teaching topic, and her work to offer assessment alternatives to her students is sensitive to the needs of different modalities of learning. It is a valuable resource for teachers of diversity, racially-charged literature, and those looking to experiment with zines as formal assessment tools.

Gongdon, Kristin G. and Doug Blandy. “Zinesters in the Classroom: Using Zines to Teach about Postmodernism and the Communication of Ideas.” Art Education. 56.3 (May 2003): 44-52

Gongdon and Blandy, professors of art at two different institutions, write about their experience using zines in college classrooms. Their work, “…found that creating and distributing zines is a successful peadagogical strategy for encouraging students to participate in postmodern discourse (44)” because reading and creating zines challenges students to take risks and express themselves intuitively. Gongdon and Blandy briefly discuss the history of zines, and then focus their discussion on the wide variety of content-area skills that can be taught using zines, including art and literature. Because zines are often created using a pastiche of materials and styles, Gongdon and Blandy believe they make an excellent primary source for approaching post-modernism and appropriation with students. They end their analysis with a summary of how one might approach critiquing and grading zines in a fair manner. Gongdon and Blandy include image scans from zines illustrating their argument. The article is persuasive if not flush with details. The reader is led to understand that zines are excellent tools for teaching, but one would need to look elsewhere for concrete instructions on how to use them in the classroom.

Wan, Amy J. “Not Just for Kids Anymore: Using Zines in the Classroom,” Radical Teacher, 55 (1999).

Wan’s article, like many of the others covered in this literature review, begins with a definition of zines and a review of their history. But Wan brings a political discussion of the power of zines to this instructive and illuminating article. Wan’s thesis is that because zines are produced outside the mainstream, they, “…[bring] the power of the media and the printed word into the hands of someone who may not be able to or may not want to work with traditional media channels.” Zines are an ideal tool for empowering students to speak their minds freely. Wan advocates strongly for their inclusion in any democratic classroom, without being specific about how to use them. She does, however, offer ideas on how to obtain zines and a bibliography of outstanding zine titles for use in the classroom.

Williamson, Judith. “Engaging Resistant Writers Through Zines in the Classroom.” The Zine and E-Zine Resource Guide. 1994. Ed. Chip Rowe. 23 Jul 2008.

In this presentation, reprinted on several websites from a talk given to the 1994 College Composition and Communication Conference Annual Convention in Nashville, TN, Judith Williamson discusses how she discovered zines through her teenaged son and decided to figure out how these engaging publications could be used in the classroom. Williamson argues that zines engage resistant readers because they are controversial, spark conversations about power and censorship, and provide an outlet for resistance and self-expression. Williamson’s talk summarizes her work investigating the power of zines through conversations and discussions with teachers and students a like. She provides a useful bibliography and encourages other educators to take a look at zines and decide for themselves how they might use them. This talk is powerful because Williamson is not a zinester; she is an older woman outside what at the time was a powerful marker of youth culture. Here she is advocating that rather than fear or oppress student creativity, teachers instead embrace the positive outcomes of teaching with zines.

On today’s menu, reviews of two web articles about zines.

Clark, Hillary. “Photocopied Politics: Zines (re)Produce a New Activist Culture.” Broken Pencil #6. Ed. Lindsay Gibb. 24 Jul 2008

In this article, originally published in the Canadian zine review magazine, Broken Pencil, Hillary Clark discusses the political implications of zine making. Her thesis is that creating a zine – any zine – is an inherently political act, because through the choice to self-publish, the zinester is rejecting traditional power structures and instead choosing to express themselves outside the mainstream. A zine need not contain a “fuck capitalism” or “smash the patriarchy” collage in order to be political; even personal zines about bands or boys make a statement about the author’s attitude towards the highly commercialized publishing industry’s ability to speak for them and their peers. Although Clark’s article is in no way scholarly, it is interesting in that it is reflective of much of the enthusiasm about zines and arguments for their importance that I found in much of my research into popular attitudes towards the genre.

Wright, Fred. “The History and Characteristics of Zines.” The Zine & E-Zine Resource Guide. 1997. Ed. Chip Rowe. 24 Jul 2008.

Fred Wright’s web article, “The History and characteristics of Zines” is an excerpt from a longer scholarly work on the subject of zines and their historical and psycho-linguistic significance. Wright summarizes the impact of some oft-cited zine ancestors such as American broadsides from the Revolutionary War, Russian Samzidat pamphlets, and Beat chapbooks. He briefly discusses the shift from early sci-fi fanzines in the 30s to riot grrrl punk zines of the 90s. In Part II of his article, Wright delves into the commodification and appropriation of zine culture by the power elite, and comments on the continued significance of zines today as documentation of an era in popular history. The article is accessible yet authoritative, and offers an excellent introduction to the history of alternative media and publication.

Dodge, Chris. “Collecting the Wretched Refuse: Lifting a Lamp to Zines, Military Newspapers and Wisconsonalia.” Library Trends. 56.3 (2008): 667-677.

Dodge, a prominent advocate for the collection of underground and alternative media in libraries, profiles the work of Wisconsin Historical Society librarian Jim Danky. Danky’s commitment to collection ephemera, zines and self-published materials serves as a model for other librarians working towards documenting the democratic history of people and places. Dodge’s thesis is that collecting self-published and small run publications is the duty of any library or historical society committed to preserving the literary history of a place or era. The zines, handbills, and military newspapers in Danky’s collection provide a glimpse into a part of history, the voices of marginalized individuals and groups that would otherwise be lost were they not collected. While profiling Danky’s work, Dodge discusses some of the scholarship being conducted with zines and makes a strong case for their inclusion in public and academic collections. For Dodge, zines, as documents of culture beyond the mainstream, are valuable research tools. If a researcher is interested in the history of a locale or group outside of New York City or other metropolitan center, zines and small-run publications will be the best source of information. Danky collects zines and other ephermeral publications because “no one else will,” clearly emphasizing Dodge’s point about the responsibility for cultural heritage institutions to preserve all histories, even those outside the mainstream, for future generations of scholars. Dodge’s message is that all librarians need to consider what value alternative press publications could add to their collections.

Freedman, Jenna. “A DIY Collection.” Library Journal. 131.11 (2006): 36-38.

Jenna Freedman, Zine Librarian at Barnard Library, has published several articles and given many interviews about her experience founding the Zine Collection, but this article is perhaps the most instructional. In it, she describes all of the considerations and challenges that go into planning and creating a zine collection in a library. She covers everything from writing a winning proposal, purchasing and selecting zines, cataloging and shelving. Freedman draws on the work of Dodge, Danky, and others to summarize why zines are useful additions to a library’s collection. Freedman’s biggest contribution to the literature here is in offering concrete advice to other librarians who might be considering a zine collection, or any other kind of non-traditional collection. Freedman’s collection, enthusiasm, and advocacy stand as a model for other professionals and institutions.

I first heard about the NYPL Rare Books Division’sMenu Collection this Spring in my Archives and Special Collections course. It’s collections like this one that get me all excited about librarianship, the opportunity to completely and totally geek out over some obscure corner of history and share your geekitude with others. That’s why I was so excited to see this interview with NYPL Menu librarian Rebecca Federman on a foodie blog. Rebecca might just have the coolest job at NYPL.

Now if only I had the frequent flyer miles to visit each one…non-profit book proposal, anyone?

I would very much appreciate feedback on the site — good, bad or indifferent. This strengths and weaknesses of this site will serve as a model for future online exhibits at Barnard, and I’d like to learn as much as possible about what users really think about it.

The event was co-hosted by Behind the Book, a non-profit that brings books and authors to city schools. I’d never worked with them before (I was a NYC public school teacher for eight years), but I had heard of their work. They brought together some amazing women comic artists to share their experiences and inspirations with a group of good-looking, tatted-up library and educator types over free beers and pricey cocktails. Despite the sweltering heat of late July in New York, my cousin and I got to hear Fly, Lauren Weinstein, Sara Varon, Miriam Katin, Leslie Stein, and Rebecca Donner talk about their art, their process, and their influences.

I started reading graphic novels a few years ago because as an English teacher, I’m always looking for “just-right” books for some of my struggling readers. Along the way I discovered work that I loved as well – Persepolis, Daniel Clowes, Cruddy – the genre is so rich right now with affecting and gorgeously told stories. I was not familiar with any of the work of the panelists, but the artists they cited as inspiration for their work were all familiar: Lynda Barry got a lot of talk time, as did Allison Bechdel. Leslie Stein cited Foxtrot as her first favorite strip, while Lauren Weinstein and Sara Varon talked about Mad Magazine and The Far Side. Rebecca Donner talked about her first experience with comics having been Archie and Betty and Veronica. They got me thinking about how I used to grab the Detroit News out of the mailbox every Sunday morning, imagining myself a big city sophisticate as I poured through the paper and drank my from-concentrate orange juice, just like the people on TV. It didn’t matter that I was only reading the “funny papers”; it was my ritual and I loved being the only person in my house, besides my father, who looked at anything in paper besides the TV Guide.

Of all the panelists, Fly was the most memorable. Barnard’s Zine Library has several of her zines, and she’s a friend of ABC No Rio. While everyone else talked about writing personal and semi-auto-biographical stories, she spoke about politics, punk and anarchy with a sweet, funny and honest tone that endeared her to the audience. Both Fly and Katin were interesting in that they came to comics through different media, and had both come up in a generation somewhat removed from the other panelists and most of the audience. Katin was clearly a child of the 60s while Fly had a barely-reformed riotgrrrl sneer. They brought I perspective to the panel that I appreciated.

Despite generational differences, everyone on the panel seemed to agree that technology is killing comics and self-publishing. I was a bit disheartened to hear so much negativity, but not surprised. A bunch of artists speaking to a backyard-full of bibliophiles can’t help but assert the power of a physical work of art to touch and inspire. But hardly anyone (other than Lauren Weinstein, who had created web comix for gurl.com) spoke about the power of the internet to connect readers with content. As a book lover, I see the value in paper, binding, and ink. But as an educator and an activist, I don’t think we can ignore the unprecedented potential for access afforded by technology. I’d love to see more of the work of these amazing women on the web.

All in all, I’m excited by the work the Desk Set is doing to bring together professionals in the library and education profession with artists, authors, and content-producers. And where SLA or ALA events can be just as enlightening, the Desk Set’s get-togethers always include booze, young people, and energy. I’m bummed that I’m leaving NYC, but hope to find a similar community of young professionals on the West Coast. If it doesn’t exist, I might have to start it.

That was until we decided to move to San Francisco this summer. In the process of packing up my books, I realized that I don’t have any kind of record of my library. There’s no catalog or shelf list. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, but when packing up every single one of my precious tomes and shipping them across the country, I get a little anxious about one or two boxes falling through the cracks. So last night I spent several hours entering my books into LibraryThing, with great results:

Just about every book I own is owned by at least one other nerd on the planet, and only a few books are missing covers. I was pretty impressed. I tagged each book with it’s genre, and occassionally, it’s use. I made notes of which books had inscriptions, signatures and annotations that make them valuable to me. Currently, we have our books shelved by color, so I made a note of the color on the spine. The last thing I did was tag each book with a letter – A, B, C, D, or E – corresponding to which of the five UHaul boxes it ended up in. I’m hoping to be able to use these tags later to create box lists, so that once we reach CA I can replace any books lost or damaged in the move.

Of course, I’m not done. Four hours last night was not enough, and we need to order more boxes. I’ve got a good two or three more boxes of stuff, and my partner has his own 5-7 boxes of stuff (are collections are pretty diverse, with only a few overlaps. Maybe that’s part of why we fell in love? Both obsessive collectors of books?) so there will be more LibraryThinging in the future.

And of course, I did some deaccessioning. There are quite a few gems from my goth and chicklit days available on half.com right about now.

I like LibraryThing (as opposed to Bibliophil and GoodReads, both of which also garnered experimental accounts) because of their commitment to working with brick and mortar libraries, and the fact that they have their finger on the pulse of what’s going on with different Web 2.0 applications across the internets. My only concerns are about the utility of LibraryThing. I’ve got all my books entered, but how can I manipulate the data now that it’s on the web? Am I going to be able to print reports or catalogs that’ll help me take and keep inventory? What sort of tags will I have wished I’d entered when I go to re-shelve all this stuff in our new place? I’ve also thought a lot about how to use it to manage classroom libraries, but haven’t come up with any good solutions.

I’ll keep playing around with LibraryThing until I get a handle on how it can work for me. Right now it’s giving some focus to a very unfocused move, so that’s one useful feature right there.

For Dempsey, this means redefining the way that libraries organize, describe, and share materials with the public. His recommendations seem to be in step with innovations in the library world as a whole. For example, Dempsey argues that discovery needs to be simpler; Netflix works because people can easily find the dvds they’re interested in and a hundred other dvds they didn’t even know they were interested in. Library OPACs do not work in this same intuitive and responsive way, but as Kristen Antelman reports, libraries like North Carolina State University are working to make OPACs easier to use, connecting users with the long tail quickly and painlessly. OPACs are only one part of the problem, however, and professionals are working to improve metadata and inter-institutional sharing of standards and information to improve discovery.

In addition to improving discovery, libraries must improve the ways in which content is delivered. For many, this means that materials ought to be digitized and delivered via the web. Large scale digitization projects have sprung up at major research and public libraries across the country. These include publically and privately funded efforts including the equally-loved-and-reviled Google Book Project. A simple scan of the library blogosphere provides exciting glimpses into all the work that’s going on around user experience and interaction design both with discovery and delivery in the library world, all centered around connecting more people with more “stuff” in the long tail.

Digitizing the long tail has many perceived benefits. Librarians and archivists have struggled for years with how to maximize access to materials while also ensuring long-term preservation. In the eyes of conservators, allowing random users to thumb through a collection of brittle manuscripts from the 18th century is approaching heresy. By the same token, placing limits and restrictions on access to a select group of highly specialized researchers goes against core tenets of the library and archives profession. This tension between preservation and access has resulted in debates and conflicts. Subsequently, handbooks like the Code of Ethics of the Society of American Archivists dictate that professionals must strike a balance between preserving the record or object and providing access to it.

Digitization would appear to be the perfect solution to the problem in that the process of creating digital copies of fragile and unique materials allows for long-term preservation while also making opportunities for access to a record’s content which in no way threatens the material itself. But is preserving content enough? What role does the medium in which the content is presented play in its interpretation and the making of meaning? Is the original medium important? What affect does migrating content from one format to another have on its meaning? Marshall McLuhan, everyone’s favorite philosopher of media, would argue of course that medium and message are inextricably linked. Many librarians, archivists, and bibliophiles would use his ideas to argue the value of the original form and dissuade us from considering digitized forms to be authoritative. This may be the case, but I would argue that the current trend in digitization does not call for the destruction of originals as was the case during the microfilming craze of recent decades, and instead places renewed value in original form by advocating the long-term preservation of both book and scan.

What interests me about digitization is the new value that can be drawn from old content when it is presented in a new form. Of course new interpretations will be drawn from an old book when it is digitized and accessed on the web, but isn’t that the point? Getting old stuff in front of new eyes in order to facilitate the making of new meanings? How can new media forms be used to present content in new ways, rather than just emulating old forms in a fresh copy? N. Katherine Hayles, author of Writing Machines, and other new media scholars are interested in just these questions. In the way that television, when it was first introduced, emulated radio, Web 1.0 emulated books with chapters with the user drilling down into content through a hierarchy of ideas. Web 2.0 is deconstructing that hierarchy and pushing the boundaries of media, creating new definitions of how we think, see, and react. Is it so bad that people are reading Macbeth online for free rather than dropping $100 a seat to see it at BAM? Is the performance happening tonight any closer to Shakespeare’s original vision than a hypertext annotation on Google Books might be?

Philosophical considerations aside, the main question with digitization seems to be whether it really addresses the problem of preservation. Michael Day presents the grim realities of digital preservation. Unfortunately, it turns out that digital forms of materials are just a fragile as physical forms and require just as much care. This includes materials that are “born digital” and have never existed in physical form, including websites. At first this seems counter-intuitive, but Day discusses how changes in technology can render a digital copy obsolete and unreadable much more quickly than time would render a book or a moving image unusable. Digital preservationists struggle with whether to migrate an obsolete file type to a new file type every few years or whether to build emulators on new platforms capable of reading old file types.

Deanna Macrum and Amy Friedlander of the Council on Library and Information Resources argue that the history of preservation in libraries can teach us much about how to move forward with digital preservation. Just as libraries have learned from mistakes like printing on cheap paper or cutting up and destroying books for microfilming, they will continue to learn as they struggle to deal with the realities of life in a digital age. According to Macrum and Friedlander, a library’s mission will always be, “…to preserve the resources on which research, teaching, and learning so heavily depend,” and, I would argue, to provide access to those resources. In today’s day and age, Macrum and Friedlander note that libraries will have to consider their history as well as their users in the attempt to continue to meet that mission.

Clearly, the future of libraries is full of uncertainty. I think what is most encouraging to me as I enter the profession is that all of this debate and discussion is going on in earnest all over the globe and in a variety of different settings, including libraries, archives, museums, and even corporations. Digital preservation of material is a problem that is of interest to so many different groups of stakeholders, and there are so many smart people working on it, that it seems impossible for no good solution to be found. I’m excited to be a part of the generation of librarians who get to tackle this problem.