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Zines and Zine Making for LIA, Summer 2022

This guide accompanies zine librarian Jenna Freedman's zine library section of the Young Women's Leadership Initiative pre-baccalaureate program, coordinated by Lila Livingston for Barnard College's Athena Center, executive directed by Umbreen Bhatti.

Getting Started

Black cat climbing in a zine rack in a bookstoreWelcome to the Barnard Zine Library!

The Barnard Zine Library is part of the Barnard Library and Academic Information Services (BLAIS) in the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning at Barnard College, Columbia University. The zines are described in the library catalog we share with Columbia University Libraries (CUL), CLIO.

Barnard's zines reflect the Barnard College student population. We have zines by women, nonbinary people, and trans men, with a collection emphasis on zines by women of color and a newer effort to acquire more zines by trans women. We collect zines on feminism and femme identity by people of all genders. The zines are personal and political publications on activism, anarchism, body image, gender, parenting, queer community, riot grrrl, sexual assault, trans feminisms, and other topics. Our zines are at the lower end of the production level scale and typically cost $10 or less, with most of them in the $1-$5 range.

Follow the zine library on Instagram @barnardzinelibrary photo of a bear in sunglasses, a crown, and pleather jacket holding scissors and "a rly cool zine"

We have a zine club that makes a compilation zine every semester. The zine club been led by BIPOC and other students continuously since 2010.

Contribute your zine to the Barnard Zine Library QR code for the page linked in the "Contribute your zine" text

Optional! Add your zine to our library.

What does it mean to have zines in libraries? Writings by teens?

Give you completed zine to us for scanning. We'll return the print copy and post the scan to a shared collection.

Make sure the name/title on your zine match the name/title on the deposit sheet.