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Fanzines @ BGSU

Zines are located in the Browne Popular Culture Library and in the Music Library and Bill Schurk Sound Archives and can be found by using Library Search.

black and white zine covers collaged in background with zines written in ransom letter style with various cut out backgrounds and bpcl logo

What are zines?

Zines are often hard to describe, though you will likely know it when you see it. Usually they will have several of the following characteristics:

  • Self-publishedcover of superzine
  • Copied on a photocopier
  • Stapled or folded
  • Made in small batches (under 500)
  • Community-focused
  • Low-budget
  • Distributed widely and cheaply (often free or for the cost of the photocopy)
  • Sometimes serialized (for example: issue 1, issue 2, etc.)
  • Underground, alternative, or non-mainstream

Zines also cover a wide variety of topics, including fandom (fanzines), personal memoirs or stories (perzines), literature or poetry (literary zines), art or comics (art zines, comic zines), DIY topics (DIY zines), social justice or current affairs topics (political zines), and more.    

 

Zines at BGSU

Zines are located in the Browne Popular Culture Library and in the Music Library and Bill Schurk Sound Archives and can be found by using various methods. All zines are non-circulating.

  1. All cataloged zines in both collections can be searched by title in Library Search.
  2. Personal zines can be searched by author in most cases as well as by title.
  3. All zines are catalogued with the genre heading zines. They can also be searched with other subjects like science fiction periodicals, fantasy fiction periodicals, rock music periodicals, etc.

Browse by Subject

You can search for zines at BGSU by performing a keyword search or a genre search (using zines) in Library Search.

Here are a few search suggestions for finding specific kinds of zines: