Zines are hand-made and photocopied books (and they're pronounced ZEEEEN). Zines tackle a wide variety of subjects, including political, feminist, literary, how-to, or personal. 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 designed to provide alternative perspectives and to provide a sense of the aesthetic of zines.
Girl Zines by 
The Riot Grrrl Collection by 
Cambodian Grrrrl by We collect zines that represent a sampling of local artists/writers, memoir, 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.
You'll find our zines on the first (bottom) floor of the library. Look for the zines on a shelf near the Young Adult collection (south side of the building). 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.
Some of our zines have been created by Gustavus students! If you're interested in donating a zine to the collection, please email us.
Jason Luther of Syracuse University has a Zotero group for citations to scholarship on zines. Check out the group library to browse lots of books and articles on zines.
