Welcome to our guide about the zine collection at the Gustavus Library! You can find our small but dynamic collection on the bottom floor of the library. Head downstairs and toward the south (Olin hall) side of the building. The zines are located near the Young Adult collection. You are welcome to browse zines and even check them out. Some of our zines have been created by Gustavus students! If you're interested in donating a zine to the collection, please email us.
Girl Zines by 
The Riot Grrrl Collection by 
Cambodian Grrrrl by 
The Archival Turn in Feminism by First, it's pronounced ZEEEEN.
Zines are hand-made and photocopied books. They tackle a wide variety of subjects, including political, feminist, literary, how-to, or personal (perzines). They are part of an expressive tradition stretching all the way back to Elizabethan pamphlets, with particular roots in fanzines and feminist expression of the 1990s.
Our zine collection is a small one designed to provide alternative perspectives and to provide a sense of the aesthetic of zines.
For more background on zines, see Jenna Freedman's definition-essay posted at the (awesome) Barnard Zine Library site.
We collect zines that represent a sampling of local artists/writers, memoir (perzines), art and literature, gender and diversity, and contemporary protest movements. If you want to search for zines in our catalog, type in a keyword and add the magic command b8:zines.
As mentioned above, you'll find our zines on the first (bottom) floor of the library. Head toward the Olin Hall side of the building & look for the zines on a shelf near the Young Adult collection. Some zines are on display stands, and the rest are in folders organized alphabetically by title. They can be checked out for two weeks. All of them are cataloged. Enjoy!
For more information, check out these sites.
If you are zinester, let us know! Our collection is growing.
The Gustavus library is happy to be part of the Zine Libraries of Minnesota Unconsortium! We'll try to keep up with local zine culture through this connection.
Jason Luther of Syracuse University started a Zotero group for citations to scholarship on zines. Check out the group library to browse lots of books and articles on zines.
