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How to Topple the White, Upper Class Patriarchy in Higher Education with a Piece of Paper

This guide accompanies a workshop delivered by Zine Librarian Jenna Freedman and Zine Assistant Ren Huang BC '22 at Barnard College's Summer Pedagogy Symposium, July 2020.

Getting Started

Welcome 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 are created by womxn and non-binary people, a collection emphasis on zines by womxn of color and a new (2019) effort to acquire more zines by transwomen. 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.

There are two zine collections: circulating stacks and special collections. A small percentage of our zines have links to online versions or related resources.

Circulating zines are located on the 2nd floor of the Milstein Center and can be borrowed by Barnard and Columbia students and members of the BorrowDirect and MaRLI networks and are also available via interlibrary loan. Barnumbia loans are semester long and renewable 99 times.

The zine library is open the same hours as the Milstein Center, and can be checked out during Circulation & Help Desk hours.


What topics are of interest to you? Let's look them up in CLIO. A search will always begin with < zines >. Examples:

You can also explore by genre, e.g., personal zines, political zines, minicomics.

Quaranzines

cover of Coronavirus ¿Qué es? zine: virus molecule with an Amazon arrow smileBarnard Zine Library staff are collecting COVID-19 themed zines made by womxn, nonbinary people, and all members of the Barnard community. We will gladly buy two copies of your zine via PayPal.* We can provide a postal address (the zine librarian's home) or can print black and white pdfs on 8.5x11 paper. Email zines@barnard.edu to connect with us. As of July 8, we have about 100 zines in CLIO, some of them with download links.

*Up to $8 per zine, price is up to you and typically reflects printing and postage costs and your labor. Higher end zines are out of scope.