WESTFIELD — The Athenaeum will collaborate with Westfield State University this Friday afternoon on a program that will introduce and promote the university’s new zine collection.
What are zines? According to Becky Blackburn, public services librarian at the Westfield Athenaeum, they’re self-published and small-print-run non-commercial handmade magazines.
“They’re typically small and creative, using collage and cartoons, for example, to communicate. Zines are a tool to educate, inspire and create,” she explained.
The two-hour program on Feb. 10 will also include the first of two workshops on zine making. Participants will meet at 2 p.m. on the Westfield State University campus at the Ely Library instruction classroom on the mezzanine level. The second workshop will be in late April at the Athenaeum.
“Zine Making 101″ will begin with a tour of the university’s zine collection and then show participants how to make their own zines. At the second workshop, participants will be able to finish a zine or create a new one. Both are open to adults in both the WSU community and Westfield who are interested in making zines.
Blackburn said the program stemmed from a conversation with Anna Boutin-Cooper, the new research and instruction librarian at WSU. Boutin-Cooper told Blackburn last fall that the university was building a zine collection and thought the Athenaeum might be interested in collaborating with WSU to help get the word out.
Boutin-Cooper said WSU’s zine collection at Ely Library was launched in January.
“We couldn’t have launched this collection without generous funding from WSU President Linda Thompson and her Presidential Innovation Fund,” she added.
“Starting a zine collection here was my idea, as I managed a zine collection at my previous job,” she said. “I thought it would be a terrific way to engage students and the wider Westfield community in creative practice and community building.”
This zine collection primarily features contemporary zines, but it does have a few outliers that have older publication dates going back to the 1990s. Most of the collection, however, has been published since the 2010s to today.
“One of the beautiful things about zines is that they can be whatever their creators want them to be, both in format and topic,” said Boutin-Cooper. She explained that when she was “dreaming up” this collection, she wanted it to stay true to zines’ roots as community building and information sharing tools, especially for marginalized groups.
There are a wide range of topics featured in the collection. Among them: literature, queer horror, personal safety, Indigenous poetry, feminism, mushroom foraging, and sewing.
“When purchasing zines for the collection, we strived to have our collection represent a wide range of creators, too, so many of our zines are by Black, brown, Indigenous and queer folks,” said Boutin-Cooper.
There was an initial purchase of 104 zines from four distributors — “distros,” as they’re called in the zine world — to start the collection. Boutin-Cooper said these titles were selected according to the Library’s Collection Development Policy using the expertise of librarians and in support of the university’s priorities of student engagement and enhancing campus culture.
Boutin-Cooper said the February program is designed to function as a brief overview of making zines: “It’s my hope that it will spark interest in both creating zines and utilizing the collection.”
Boutin-Cooper said zines appear to be making a comeback from their heyday in the 1980s and ‘90s.
“I think it’s largely because of their print format,” Boutin-Cooper said. “While zinesters (people who make zines) can and do make digital zines, too, there is something immensely gratifying about creating a tangible expression of your ideas and passions through zines.”
Since the workshop is relatively short, Boutin-Cooper said participants will be encouraged to make a miniature eight-page zine that can be made from a single leaf of 8½ by 11-inch paper.
She added that zines come in all shapes and sizes — there are zines that are even smaller than these one-page zines, and there are also zines that are full-size, meaning an entire sheet of letter-sized paper forms one page.
Much of the workshop will be devoted to making zines. There also will be handouts that explain the history of zines and how to make a one-page zine. A range of materials will be provided, including copy paper, old magazines on a variety of topics for collage, glue sticks, Sharpie markers, scissors, rulers and more.
Participants are encouraged to bring their own favorite pens, stickers or washi tape, if they want, but it’s not required. Some zines from the WSU collection will be available for participants to peruse as inspiration for their own creations.
Boutin-Cooper said she’s planning to have more zine-making workshops in the future.
“I invite participants from these WSU/Athenaeum workshops to donate copies of their zines to the collection, so that it will, in time, also represent the interests of the community, both at WSU and in Westfield,” she said.
Since WSU and the Athenaeum are collaborating on the workshops, Boutin-Cooper and Blackburn decided to have one workshop at each of their locations to reach a wider audience. The second workshop will be April 28 at the Westfield Athenaeum from 2 to 4 p.m.
For more information, contact Boutin-Cooper at aboutincooper@westfield.ma.edu or Blackburn at bblackburn@westath.org. Each workshop requires a separate registration. To register for Friday’s session, visit westath.libcal.com/event/10291522.
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