The Physical Details of Booklets
Book printers manufacture paperback books with a form of bookbinding called perfect binding, in which their pages are glued together to form a spine.Just picture a paperback book: you're picturing perfect binding.
Booklets like zines are not perfectly bound but are saddle stitched, a printer's term for stapled, or saddle sewn, bound with a needle and thread or string. A "foldy" zine consist of several pages folded together without any binding. The vast majority of zines are stapled.
The Pace Zine Library is located at 41 Park Row, 15th floor (English dept.), room 1523. Thank you to the English Department for having us!
Click here to view hours when someone is staffing the Zine Library and it is open for drop-in visitors. NOTE: you must have access to MS Outlook to view. In general, the PZL is open on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1:00-3:00 p.m; on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.; and on Fridays from 10:30 a.m. -4:00 p.m. You can also make an appointment if these hours don't work for you. Email us at zinelibrary@pace.edu.
Please do not bring food or drinks into the PZL, and handle the items with care. The collection is noncirculating and any use of zines outside the PZL (such as in a classroom) must be planned in advance.
The Zine Library is a resource for experiential pedagogy originally sponsored by the Faculty Center and shaped by the financial generosity of the English Department, the Beekman Library, the Faculty Center, and several faculty members. The Library includes self- or micro-published zines, pamphlets, artists' books, literary chapbooks, independent magazines, and radical and alternative publications of all kinds, both contemporary and historical. What unifies all these types of publications is a passionate attitude and an urgent desire to communicate and express.
By definition, zines are about representing diverse points of view and personal interests. To make a zine, you don't have to be able to draw. You do have to have an idea, concern, or passion. Increasingly, zine culture is centered around amplifying the voices of historically marginalized groups and people. A large percentage of the material we acquire is made by BIPOC or queer creators. Many zines are made by activists and feminists. Zines are often associated with youth, but some people have been making zines for decades.
The collection also includes zines that feature NYC, art, poetry, photography, comics and illustration, humor, fashion, film, science, sports, and the environment. This is not an exhaustive list, and we have something for everyone, we think! Whether political, cool, artistic, critical, intellectual, literary, or enthusiastic, zinesters and other creators don't wait for permission. These independent publications are not accountable to corporations, institutions, or commercial forces although a few are published by commercial forces, such as the Chime zine by the fashion company Gucci. (Whether or not Gucci's publications are truly zines, or not, is a perfect classroom discussion and debate!) The Zine Library consists primarily of zines found at specialized bookstores, zine fairs, and websites like Etsy.
Being student centered is a goal of the Library, so we want to have students select zines as much as possible. We also want to to collect zines made by Pace students and to keep one print copy in the Library and one digitized copy in the Pace Digital Repository. We also have books (and zines) about making zines.
An early photo of the current location of the Pace Zine Library at 41 Park Row, room 1523! Shelves by Prof. Derek Stroup!
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