Favourite Conference Poster - Glasgow Zine Library

At the 2024 CAHG conference, attendees were asked to vote for their favourite posters at the event. One of the three winners was Glasgow Zine Library (GZL). Who are they, and what is a zine? Well... read on in their own words!

GZL is a zine library and community space based in Govanhill, Glasgow, established in 2018, with a growing international collection of roughly 4000 zines. GZL also hosts a blended online/offline programme of workshops, professional and artistic development opportunities, community meals, film screenings, discussion groups, reading groups, children’s arts and crafts, social clubs, heritage activities and more. This includes Glasgow Zine Fest, a yearly celebration of zine culture, featuring events about art, community, and heritage. All of our events are either free or pay-what-you-can.

What is a zine?

Some people might not know what exactly a zine is. Generally speaking, zines are publications often made in small circulations, printed and bound using different methods and sizes. They can be about anything and can be made by anyone. There are no barriers to entry and no specific skills required in zine-making. Their accessibility as an art-form has historically allowed for them to be a platform for marginalised people to express ideas, document experiences and create alternative DIY methods of making, sharing information, and community building. Zines were used to share resources during the civil rights movement, the AIDS crisis, and more recently on issues including abortion rights, asylum system navigation, and trans healthcare.

GZL is based in the Govanhill area of Glasgow, which is the most diverse area in Scotland. The zines in our collection are a valuable resource to our diverse community. We have growing collections of zines by and about the experiences of LGBTQ+ people, people of colour, neurodivergent people, people with disabilities, and zines about different political and social issues.

Shaped by feedback

Our current collection and cataloguing processes were shaped by feedback from a series of 12 community cataloguing workshops sessions we held last year that each looked at particular areas in the collection, like Cataloguing Comics or Cataloguing Queer Zines. These sessions involved discussing issues around language and terminology, and engaging our local community directly with our collection. We also have a group of dedicated cataloguing volunteers who’s hard work has helped us catalogue almost 1000 zines since volunteer cataloguing sessions began at GZL last October.

At GZL we want to focus on engaging people with our collection processes and with the huge array of work in our archive. We want to keep building on our collection to reflect the needs of our community in an inclusive, welcoming way.

More information can be found on the Glasgow Zine Library website, or you can follow us on our Instagram. Our online catalogue of zines can be found here. Meanwhile, our archive entry on this website can be found here.