QUESTION: zine cataloging

question / pregunta: 

Hi,
I'm beginning a paper about cataloguing zines and self-published material. Do you know of any good articles about cataloguing zines? Do you know of any notable zine collections? Any major zine collections I should know about in the New York Metropolitan area? Any information about how to catalogue zines would be much appreciated.

Thank you,
Irene

Answers

Irene,

Apologies for taking so long to respond, but our website has been down since shortly after you submitted your question.

Do you know of any good articles about cataloguing zines?
Basically do a search in the Library Literature database on {zine* and catalog*} and see what you come up with. If you are in library school, your university provides access. If you are an undergrad you might not have access. In that case, I suggest doing the same search in a multidisciplinary database like ProQuest or Academic Search.

There is also a nice little zine bibliography in Zine Librarian Zine #3. It's toward the end of the zine. btw, if you're going to cite ZLZ3, you might like to consult Cite This Zine on how to do so. There is an article on cataloging zines in ZLZ3, but you should note that zine cataloging to some extent is being made as we (zine librarians) go along. I wrote about how we catalog zines at the Barnard College Library zine collection in Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front. Let me know if you want me to email you the pre-print. The Union Catalog discussion at the Zine Librarians Conference might also be of interest.

Do you know of any notable zine collections? Any major zine collections I should know about in the New York Metropolitan area?

In NYC:
ABC No Rio
Barnard College Library
New York Public Library
Pratt Institute

Also, note the American spelling of catalog and cataloging when doing your research. (Don't feel bad, The New York Times uses the British spelling, too.)

To visit the Barnard Zine Collection, give me (Jenna) a holler at zines@barnard.edu.