What’s a Zine?

The Trenton Free Public Library is creating a circulating Zine Library in the Poetry Cafe, adjacent to the Social Justice Corner in the community room, and just outside the door to the Trentoniana Department. By definition, “zine” (pronounced “zeen”) is short for “fanzine” and is a do-it-yourself, limited-run publication. Anyone can create a zine about anything; it could have nothing but words, or nothing but pictures, or both, or neither. It can be about your cat or your favorite music or that jerk who sat next to you on the train today. It can be any size with any number of pages, created on the computer and printed out, or photocopied and hand-colored. There can be 100 copies or there can be 1 unique copy. You can also create your own definition of what a zine can be – there really are no rules. 

Having a zine collection within any type of “establishment” is rather un-zinelike, but what better place than a public library to allow for all voices to be heard and all opinions to be shared? In fact, the location of the zine collection in the library was deliberate since poetry, history, and social justice are just a few of the topics to be found in zines, with each demonstrating its own type of perspective.

What does all this have to do with Trentoniana? This: what happens today is tomorrow’s history – what people are doing and talking about today is what people in the future (even a year from now) will want to know. While the mainstream press and social media outlets tell us who and what we should know, zines document the collective memory of the community – the true voices of the present, many of them marginalized. We learn more about a time period from a teen’s hand-written journal or a letter from a soldier than we do from a glossy newsmagazine. Trentoniana’s mission is to preserve the closest reality of the times, and those voices are coming from us right now.

At present, the circulating zine collection contains a handful of books about zines, zine-making, and the underground press, along with about 20-30 actual zines, with many many more already purchased and waiting to be cataloged. Stop by and grab a couple of the free mini-zines (courtesy of the Quarantine Public Library) and you’ll see that anything, any topic, can be a zine. There’s even a free zine about how to make a zine, so why not give it a try. We want to see your zines – share with us!

Plans are underway for a “zine fest” to be held at the library in spring/summer 2022. Meanwhile, check out the webpage www.trentonlib.org/zine-library and follow us on Instagram @trenton.makes.zines <https://www.instagram.com/trenton.makes.zines/>