Okay, first things first.
What’s a zine?
Here are a few peoples’ thoughts on this:
“Zines are cheaply made printed forms of expression on any subject.”
-from Whatcha Mean What’s a Zine? The Art of Making Zines and Mini-Comics
“The fanzine goes back as far as the early 1930s, when young science-fiction fans reproduced their own small magazines on messy mimeographs and even messier hectographs, crude precursors to today’s more accessible photocopy machines… The advent of cheaply photocopying in the 1980s liberated the zine. Anyone with something to say could afford to self-publish. By the 1990s, women, feeling the need to communicate with each other and empowered by Riot Grrrlz, adoped the zine as the perfect medium in which to share their personal life stories, rants, philosophies, humor, poetry – and comics.”
-from From Girls to Grrrlz: A History of Women’s Comics, From Teens to Zines
“A zine is a little periodical that’s generally written, designed, and produced by the same person or group (i.e., self-published).
The content of zines–as well as how they’re put together–are limited only by the imagination of the author and can be made in a number of ways. People have done anything from professing their love of brownies to drawing in crayon about their latest heartbreak.”
-from the CLP Main Teen Zines Page
Here at CLP Main we have two zine collections – the Teen Zine collection and the First Floor New and Featured zine collection. The Teen collection now has over 200 zines. These zines can be checked out of the library! They’re housed in the Teen Department and cover a huge variety of topics and have been authored by zine makers locally and nationally. Local authors can donate their work to this collection. These zines speak to Teen interests and experience. 
There’s a brand-spanking new zine browsing collection with an adult focus in one of the reading nooks out on the First Floor. We’re really excited about our plans to offer personal zines, zines on politics, diy/how-to zines, zines on glbtq/gender issues, art and comic zines, health and body image zines, feminist zines, zines authored by people in prison, and locally-authored zines!
You can find both zine collections catalogued on LibraryThing:
Go to http://www.librarything.com/catalog/clpteenszines for the Teen Zines and http://www.librarything.com/catalog/clpzines for the Adult collection.
Hopefully it’s clear by now – you really need to check out our zines. (Or read them here.)
Send us your email address if you’d like to get updates on the zine collection or to hear about our zine-related programming, like zine readings or swaps.
Eleventh Stack 