Manchester Print Fair #8

This coming Saturday (the 25th) sees the next Manchester Print Fair. This time it's in the People's History Museum and there'll be 40 stalls selling zines, as well as prints and various other dead nice things. Well worth a look. Plus, the People's History Museum is great so you can kill two birds with one stone and have a look around the exhibitions while you're there.

There's a list of stallholders on the Manchester Print Fair Facebook page and there'll also be a variety of print demonstrations by GF Smith.

https://www.facebook.com/events/676521535772712/

SE London Zine Fair 2014

It seems to be the season for zine fairs and print fairs, and here's another one, this time in South East London. We're not going to be there, sadly, but it looks like it's going to be really good. You can check their website here or tell them you're going via the Facebook event page.

Nottingham Zine Festival 2014

It feels like there are a load of exciting zine events for us to plug at the moment, so apologies if you're itching for more posts about new zines! We thought we'd give Nottingham Zine Festival a quick mention, though, as it's happening this Saturday! We're exhibiting a bit of the zine library collection and there should be a comfy area for you to put your feet up and read some of our amazing zines.

There's also loads of really good stalls, plus some sure-to-be inspirational speakers like Cherry Style and Chella Quint. If you're in the Nottingham area and you're at a loose end on Saturday, pop over and say hi!

@ThriveCollective

New In: A Series of Poems About, Inspired By, and Written in Manchester and London (And some other zines too!)

Stephen James has sent us these three zines of his to add to the collection. Thanks Stephen! You can find out what he's up to on his excellent blog.

New In: You

We have got loads of issues of You! Some are already on the shelves in the library, but here are some issues that have come in recently (Mostly from our friend Anne who lives in Japan). According to its Zine Wiki entry, "You takes the form of a free anonymous letter addressed to you from various writers, usually handwritten, often sealed in a paper bag, published by Luke You. The letter is often signed off 'from Luke' but may also be written by different people."

New In: Loads of zines

Here's another big bundle of zines that have been donated to us recently! Thanks so much for sending these in. They're already on the shelves for you to read so pop in and have a look. There hasn't been a count of the collection recently and it'd be interesting to see just how many we have now. 

We're hoping to get the shelving improved a little bit in the near future so when we have to clear the shelves we'll probably have a little count. Maybe we could have some kind of competition?

New In: Loads more zines! (Another video)

Here's another video of a big bundle of zines we got from Anne in Japan. You might remember that she's sent us a couple of big piles of zines in the past, but I think this most recent one is our favourite so far. So much good stuff! The video is quite long and quick, so get hovering over the pause button in case you see anything you really like. The zines are in the library now!

New in: Loads of zines! (Video Special)

We have received some big donations from some very kind people recently. We don't really have time to write a blog post about every single one of the zines that we get in these bundles, but we thought it'd be nice to feature them in a quicker way!

Here's some of the zines that we received a couple of weeks ago. Mainly music stuff from the 90s. They'll all be on the shelves within the week, so if there's any that take your fancy, come down to Nexus and have a look!

Thanks Michelle for sending these in!

Yorkshire Zine Weekend

Exciting zines news, everyone! The Yorkshire Zine Weekender is only a week and a bit away and, while all the stalls have been snapped up, we can guarantee that they'll both be well worth visiting. Two zine fairs in two days! Here's the lovely flippable poster for each event:

Sheffield Zine Fest - 15th March, Electric Works

Tell them and everyone you know that you're going on Facebook. 

Sadly we won't be at the Sheffield leg of the Yorkshire Zine Weekender, but I think that the Salford Zine Library film that Craig made in 2011 will be getting an airing at some point during the day. So go and check that out!

Leeds Zine Fair - 16th March, Wharf Chambers

We'll be at this, although we'll be selling copies of our zine rather than exhibiting the zine library this time. Come and say hi, though! And we'll gladly take any donations for the library that you might have too.

Tell all your friends about the weekender, it's sure to be brilliant. I've just been looking at the list of people who have stalls over the weekend and salivating. I am definitely going to be coming home with a massive bundle of zines. See you there!

Classification Party

On Saturday we had our classification party, an attempt to sort the collection into a handful of very broad categories. We're re-shelving everything this afternoon so, from tomorrow, it should be ever so slightly easier to find the kind of zines you're interested in. The categories are (Currently - we're open to changing the system!):

- Perzines (Autobiographical zines)

- Arts and crafts, which includes illustration, comics, photography, film, graphic design, fine art - all visual arts, basically

- Activism, which includes LGBT, gender, politics, that kind of thing

- Food and the environment, which includes cooking, veganism, vegetarianism, gardening, eco stuff, fair trade, animals and travel as well

- Creative writing, which includes poetry and short stories

- Sports - all the football and rugby league zines we have

- Music

- Other - as you would expect, most of the zines in the collection don't fit into these categories so the 'other' section is understandably large

These categories aren't perfect or very precise, but we think they'll be a useful guide when browsing the shelves. Obviously we'd encourage you to look at absolutely everything, but we understand if you don't have a spare few days to read every zine in the collection!

Thanks to all the people who came to help us sort the zines into categories. Thanks to Stef Bradley for making the posters and to Cherry Styles for taking some lovely photos of everyone hard at work. Enjoy!

New in: Big Donation #2

Another big pile of zines! This time, from Anne who lives in Japan. Thanks!

New in: Big Donation #1

Look at all these! The lovely Ben Catt has kindly donated a fair chunk of his zine collection to the library. All of these are now in the library for you to read. Includes stuff like Be Honourable by Josie Long, Twigs and Apples and Your Pretty Face is Going Straight to Hell. Plus loads of other neat stuff. Thanks Ben!

New in: Activism Through Zines

One page zine by Chella Quint.

Salford Zine Library Visits Sheffield!

We're taking the zine library on the road! Or at least some of the zine library. And we're going by train. Anyway, on November 2nd we'll be carrying a hefty chunk of the zines in the library over the Pennines to Sheffield for a zine fair and zine making workshop at Bank Street Arts.

The zine fair starts at 11am and, as well as being able to have a look at our collection, you'll be able to buy some zines from some ace local zinesters too! We're going to be setting up a little 'reading room' area so you can relax with a pile of your favourite zines. Then from 2pm there's a FREE zine making workshop, which will be running until 8pm (You don't have to stay that long if you don't want to, though!). It should be loads of fun!

Places on the workshop are limited, so booking is encouraged. Do that and find out more information about the day by clicking here. Also, if you're coming to along, remember to bring some donations for us! We're always dead grateful to receive new zines to add to the collection.

Let's talk about classification

Hey! At some point in the near future we want to organise a 'classification party'. Basically, we'll get loads of people to come down to the library and help us sort the collection into broad genres or categories. It'll make it so much easier to find stuff! The plan is that there'll be some nice music and cake and cups of tea available and things like that.

Before that, though, it'd be really useful to get an idea of what genres/categories you all think would be appropriate. They have to be fairly broad, but not so broad that they're completely meaningless. Any ideas anyone?

- Sport
- Poetry
- Music (Maybe this needs to be divided into narrower categories?)
- Environment
- Politics
- LGBT
- Personal
- Compilation
- Photography
- Illustration
- Health
- Comics

Any other ideas would be appreciated! Feel free to tell me some of those aren't necessary too. Also, it'd be great if you could tell people you know who are interested in zines to join this group. Then we can have more people involved in the discussion/party and it'll be even more fun. Comments on this post and our Facebook, tweets to @SalfordZineLib, or emails to salford zine library at gmail dot come would be very gratefully received. And if the idea of a classification party sounds like fun to you, keep your eyes peeled for more info! I'll update the discussion as we go along at the bottom of this post.

 

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Update 7/10/2013: It's been suggested that there might be too many categories here. Do we think that we're better off with a less is more kind of approach? If so, what do you think the core categories are?

New in: Usual Suspect issue number 7.5

Usual Suspect 7.5 is a zine by Dave Gurz, who lives in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. It contains some cool essays about punk rock and zines. 

http://sunburnscold.com/

New in: Sticky Sounds Volume 5 + 6

Two issues of Sticky Sounds arrived together, oh boy! Both volumes contain loads of music stuff, interviews, illustrations, essays and short stories. Volume six is a bumper sized version and includes interviews with loads of different zine editors about why they make zines and things like that.

http://stickysoundszine.com/

https://twitter.com/Sticky_Sounds

New in: Best Pressed's Zine About Zines

Our friend Stef Bradley, who's zine 'Today' is already in the collection at the library, has recently set up her own zine distro called 'Best Pressed'. As well as selling zines at gigs and other exciting events, Stef recently led a zine making workshop in Liverpool. To help participants, she created a 'Zine About Zines', containing helpful instructions on how to make a zine yourself.

The zine features a useful illustrated 'What is a zine' and 'How to make a zine' sections, a comic about making zines and an interview with Young Explorer (us, when we're not doing zine library things!). We have a few of these at the library in a range of snazzy colours.

http://todayzine.wordpress.com/