... everyone's favorite magazine of limited usefulness, Time Out, this week profiled a Barnard College librarian, Jenna Freedman, responsible for amassing a sizeable zine collection -- 1,500 of them on the shelves, all of which are "written by females (or individuals who identify as such), with subjects ranging from political activism to punk rock." (I guess this means no Tourist Trap archives, alas).
The library has a slick Web site, including an extensive discussion on the blogs-vs.-zines question. (The title "Zines are Not Blogs" sorta gives away its stance). Says Freedman:
Definitions of the word “zine” vary tremendously, but they do tend to have these common characteristics:
- Self-published and the publisher doesn’t answer to anyone
- Small, self-distributed print run
- Motivated by desire to express oneself rather than to make money
- Outside the mainstream
- Low budget
There is something deliciously tangible about a zine. If only one could transfer that fresh-from-Kinko's smell to the Internet. Also, it's much harder to draw online, illustration being one thing I always treasured about my friend Diana's zine in the 1990s (about which I actually wrote an ambitious Hebdige-ean analysis for a college seminar on "The Gothic Aesthetic" -- ah, those were the days). But I never can get too far into these ontological discussions about what "blogs" are, as opposed to "the MSM," as opposed to "zines," as opposed to "those great, long, lovingly crafted letters my friends and I used to swap until I got lazy and dropped the ball" (Country Mouse, I still owe you one).
Anyway, mostly I was just happy to see that these things are being archived.
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