About

WELCOME TO THE ZINE UNION CATALOG!

Zinecat.org is a union catalog dedicated to zines! A union catalog is a resource where libraries can share cataloging and holdings information. The Zine Union Catalog (ZineCat) lets researchers discover zine holdings by searching a single catalog, and helps librarians copy catalog records to facilitate lending across libraries. ZineCat serves educators, researchers, librarians, archivists, and anyone in the general public with an interest in zines.

ZineCat is a capstone project, completed in the CUNY Graduate Center's Master's in Digital Humanities program, which provided essential resources to support the project. Special thanks to Eric Goldhagen from Openflows Community Technology Cooperative  and Milo Miller from the Queer Zine Archive Project and many others who helped make the ZineCat possible. Lisa Rhody from the Graduate Center and Maura Smale from City Tech were the project advisers.

 

THE Capstone PROJECT PARTNERS OF ZINECAT ARE:

Jenna Freedman
Contact: @zinelib
Bio: Jenna Freedman is a zine maker and zine librarian. She founded and curates the Barnard Zine Library at Barnard College, where she also serves as the Associate Director of Communications and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Librarian. This project culminates her work at the CUNY Graduate Center. A product of public school education, Jenna earned her MLIS at the University of South Florida and her BA in theater at SUNY New Paltz. Jenna's research and practice are primarily in the field of zine librarianship, a topic on which she writes and speaks frequently.

Lauren Kehoe
Contact: lsrkthelibrarian@gmail.com
Bio: Lauren Kehoe is a librarian at New York University. She received her undergraduate degree in Dramatic Literature from NYU in 2003, her MLIS from Pratt Institute in 2009, and her MA in Digital Humanities from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2020. Lauren is interested in supporting researchers and scholars in the library through proven and new methods of engaging with information.

PUBLICATIONS

You can view ZineCat’s Shared Authority zines on GitHub and find a variety of accessible versions on our shared public drive. Plain text files of the zines can also be found on our website. Both Freedman and Kehoe have also contributed to Zines in Libraries: Selecting, Purchasing, and Processing, which was published by ALA (American Library Association) in 2021. You may access PDFs of the chapters on the Zine Libraries website.


BRIEF HISTORY

The Zine Union Catalog was first discussed by a group of zine librarians at the first Zine Librarians unConference, held in Seattle in 2009. You can read more about the history of the project on the Zine Libraries website – and join our email list if you want to get involved!

Martí Massana Ferre and Alex Segal, also CUNY Graduate Center master's students, were partners in the initial project prototype. This project is also currently supported by Vita Kurland, our Metadata Intern, Jennifer Chen-su Huang, our Outreach & Documentation Coordinator, and Eric Goldhagen Freedman, our Project Developer.

Read more on our HISTORY page.

Why or Why Isn't Your Zine in the Zine Union Catalog

Zines represented in this catalog are here because they are held at one of the partner libraries. ZineCat is currently comprised of zines from ABC No Rio, the Barnard Zine Library, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Denver Zine Library, the Queer Zine Archive Project and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University. If you would like your zine to be part of one or more of these library and archive collections, contact their zine librarian.

The same goes if you want your zine out of one or more of the collections and ZineCat. Per the Zine Librarians Code of Ethics, part 1, section 2,

Whenever possible, it is important to give creators the right of refusal if they do not wish their work to be highly visible

Zine librarians may try to work with you to represent your zine in a way that makes you feel comfortable, but zine librarians that heed the code of ethics will ultimately respect your wishes.

If you manage a zine library and are interested in contributing to ZineCat, please complete this form about your zine library/collection/archive. ZineCat depends on your contributions, so thank you in advance!