On Jan. 28, a crowd of students explored a curated collection of zines and learned to make their own one-sheet zines at a “Library on Legs” event hosted by Gould Library’s Special Collections and the Department of Art and Art History in the Boliou Hall lounge. This event was one of several recent possibilities for students to engage with the process of zine-making and the history of zines as art and activism.

A zine (pronounced like the end of “magazine”) is a small self-published work, typically an artistic booklet, without any formal circulation structure. By definition, the content of a zine is unmoderated, and the creation of a zine is non-commercial; these features stem from the historical foundations of zines and zine culture within marginalized communities and small subcultures. 

At the event, students were shown how to make a one-page zine. The process, most simply, involves folding a single sheet of printer paper into a small six-page booklet. However, zines can take a variety of forms and can be constructed through any method an artist chooses.

“It was really fun. I thought [zine-making] was really easy, which was nice because I feel like zine-making seems like something ‘super cool.’ It makes me think that it would be difficult,” said Margaret Walker ’26, a library assistant who attended the event.

Conor McGrann, a digital studio arts technician at Carleton with a special interest in zines, emphasized how the accessibility of the zine-making is one of the form’s strengths.

“It’s an incredibly approachable art form,” McGrann said. “In the same way that books are an intimate experience — you hold it, and you feel, and you know what it’s about — zines are, in that way, and in some ways even more approachable, because oftentimes they’re cheap materials and done with an ethos of just spreading it as far as you can for free. I think there’s something very easily accessible about that, and I think that anybody can make a zine. It’s not a particularly hard thing to do, but that doesn’t mean great things can’t be made from them.”

The Gould Library Special Collections holds an assortment of zines. Zoe Adler, a special collections curator, explained that the zine collection has been growing recently through donations and active curation efforts.

“In Special Collections, we take care of materials that might need special physical care, or that might be valuable or difficult to replace, so [zines] completely belong there,” Adler said. “We have students who are interested in the form as an art form — interested in zines — so it makes a lot of sense for us to have it alongside our other artists’ books.”

This interest in zines was evident in the attendance of the “Library on Legs” event. Encouraged by the first event’s popularity, Adler hopes to provide similar opportunities in the future. Many, like McGrann, believe that zines are especially pertinent to the belonging that people may have at Carleton. 

“Oftentimes, zines are representative of marginalized and non-represented communities — uncommon cultures and groups of people that aren’t in the ‘canon,’” McGrann said. “I think it might be one of the easiest ways to access those points of views.”

The event was tied into an exhibit currently in Boliou of Katie Garth’s work. Garth, an artist who visited Carleton earlier this term, created a project during the COVID-19 pandemic entitled “Quarantine Public Library,” a collection of printable one-sheet-zines openly accessible online. Grath’s printable sheets were available to students at the Tuesday event for students to fold into zines and take home.

There are several other opportunities for students to engage with zines on campus right now: zines and artists’ books are on display on 4th floor of the Gould Library; a “Design Fundamentals, Zines and Artistic Publications” course is running this term; and on Jan. 31, a zine-making workshop with comic artist and zine-maker Archie Bongiovani is being held as part of Sexploration Week.

“There’s definitely an interest. I think we would like to do something similar in the library at some point,” Adler said. “This was really successful, and is inspiring us to do more of this sort of thing.”

McGrann expressed that student interest in zines and zine-making seemingly speaks to a larger cultural movement of young people exploring identity through tangible mediums. While zines are certainly less common now than they were in the past, they have been growing in popularity in the last few years, especially among Gen-Z creatives and activists.

“There is something about a tactile experience that today’s college students are looking for and striving for … There is also an inherently political nature to zines in a lot of cases, and I think that, if you’re a college student, that’s the right age to get into those types of things,” McGrann said. “It’s not surprising to me that there’s been a resurgence in [zine’s] bottom-up approach to image and information distribution.”

Adler emphasized that interested students can access the zines in special collections at any point by requesting an appointment on the Gould Library Special Collection website. Regardless of what specifically interests a student, Adler believes that the diversity of zines in Carleton’s collection are worth exploring.

Many of the zines in special collections are comics. For example, the library has a full set of artist Scott Dolin’s “Slight Headache Comics.” All 20 of the small comic zines were presented at the Library on Legs event. 

“People found them irresistible. People walked over and pretty much couldn’t help but want to pick one up and read them. They’re wonderful. They’re really charming graphically as well, so that was really fun to get to share, Adler said. “I … personally would have enjoyed having a lot more time to look at the other zines that we had, but I was too busy working the event.”

Carleton also has several political and informational zines in the library collection. Walker mentioned appreciating a historical zine about methods of abortion, although she said that her favorite zine she saw at the event was an illustrated almanac of different vegetables and herbs. Like Adler, Walker encouraged students to engage with the materials in special collections.

“There are so many cool things in special collections that I feel like not enough people know about,” she said. “Every time there’s some sort of special collections exhibit, it’s super worth going because we have all these amazing resources that people just don’t know about.