Classification Party

It has been scientifically proven that adding the word 'party' to anything automatically makes it sound more fun. So here we are attempting to make sorting things into a vaguely logical order sound exciting. On January 18th we have hired the little room at Nexus Art Cafe and we'd like people to come and help us organise the collection into a handful of very broad categories. We think this will help people to browse the shelves a little bit easier.

All the information is available on the Facebook event page. Please feel free to share the event with your pals! You don't have to commit or anything, you can just pop in for a few minutes if you happen to be in the area. There's sure to be some nice people to talk to about zines and whatever else you like talking about. And you can have a cup of tea and a slice of cake while you're at it. Check out the super cool poster below, as designed by the extremely talented Stef Bradley of Today Zine fame.

Whether you can come or not, we'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support since we took over the library in the summer. Hopefully 2014 will bring lots of exciting new developments for the library! Happy New Year!

State of the 'Zine

What are you doing on October 13th? Cancel it. The people behind the brilliant Spiel Magazine and the super talented OWT Creative people have joined forces to organise a football zine fair and zine making workshop at the National Football Museum as part of the Manchester Weekender. Here's some blurb:

"Irreverent, insightful, crass and crude – during the 70’s and 80’s the Zine emerged as a key part of grassroots football culture and became a match day staple. To celebrate the unique footballing insight provided by lo-fi fan-publishers we are opening up the museum collections to the unique brand of analysis and polemic which characterised the football fanzine.

Football 'zines have always been DIY and using the tools of the zine-maker - typewriters, photocopiers & cut-out text - we are inviting visitors to produce their own football Zine engaging with the culture of fanzines and with insight from the museum archive.

A selection of contributions produced on the day will later be assembled into a limited edition print, for sale in the Museum shop."

You can find out more about the event by clicking here.

We're hoping to have some of the zine library's collection on display at the event, providing inspiration for budding zinesters taking part in the workshop. We've been getting lots of really cool football zines recently (Keep checking this blog/the shelves for new stuff!) and it'll be good for them to stretch their legs for an afternoon.