Hampshire College Zine Collection: Practicum and Research Residency
Embedded Files
Click above to access HCZC catalog (in process of being updated)
What are zines?
“Zines, also known as fanzines, are self-produced, self-published magazines, assembled cheaply and circulated in small numbers within specific subcultures—from periodicals traded by science fiction fans starting in the 1930’s, to the punk zines of the late ‘70’s. As primary sources, zines can be read as photocopied time capsules of people’s daily lives and social scenes, unmediated by editors. Punks embraced zines due to the DIY nature of the medium. Zines were easy to create, cheap to reproduce, and could be distributed at concerts, record stores, or through the mail.”
From Michele Hardesty, Alana Kumbier, and Nora Claire Miller, “Learning with Zine Collections in ‘Beyond the Riot: Zines in Archives and Digital Space.’”
About the Course and the Zine Audit
The Hampshire College Zine Collection (HCZC) is a non-circulating library of approximately 2,000 zines. It was created by student zinemakers in the 1990s. In the late 2000s, the Zine Collective, a student group, reorganized and enlarged the collection, moving it to the Harold F. Johnson Library. Now, in the 2020s, the collection has been recategorized and expanded by a new generation of students, librarians, archivists, and professors.
Since 2024, students have been studying the politics and ethics of zine librarianship, while learning practical (if unconventional) skills of zine cataloging and conducting an audit of the HCZC. What does this mean?
Making sure that the zines that are in the digital catalog are represented on the physical shelves, and vice versa;
Making sure that our catalog entries are accurate;
Gaining critical insight into the limits and possibilities of cataloging and physically arranging a zine collection, and Hampshire’s zine collection in particular; and
Gaining familiarity with a range of zines in order to build the foundation for individual exploratory research in the collection, which we call the Research Residency.
Together with the professor and TAs they will make recommendations for its ongoing growth and stewardship.
About the research residency
In the second half of the semester, students conduct exploratory in or of the zine collection, aided by the lenses of critical archives and librarianship studies. They contribute pages inspired by this research to a collective zine at the end of the semester, as well as writing a research report.
HACU 247 Fall 2024
Research Residency Zine:
Nerdsniped: a zine by zinesters about zines
Available in the HCZC! Catalog record with full credits here
TAs Gwenevere Moriarty & Atalanta Bella-Rogol
THANK YOU to everyone who helped out and who inspired these Young Archivist Metadata (and Researcher!) Minds: Shaun Trujillo, my co-professor for the first third of the course; my wonderful TAs, Gwenevere Moriarty and Atalanta Bella-Rogol; Rachel Beckwith, Suzanne Karanikis, Natane Halasz, Tatjana Mackin and the rest of the library staff who supported us in so many ways; Melissa Hamel in Duplications; the Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP), whose From the Punked-Out Files of the Queer Zine Archive Project residency zine inspired this zine project; the Division of Academic Affairs for support to photocopy the zine; and everyone who built and maintained the HCZC over the years!
And THANK YOU to the students of HACU 247 Fall 2024 for getting up early on Friday mornings with me all semester. You are rockstars!
-Michele / Prof. Hardesty
HACU 247 Fall 2025
Research Residency Zine:
Freak Salad
Available in the HCZC! Catalog record with full credits here
TAs Acadia Manley, Anais Richards, and Annabella Swilley
Thank yours from the zine:
THANK YOU to everyone who helped make this course great!
Our wonderful TAs, the A-Team: Acadia Manley,
Anaís Richard, and Annabella Swilley;
our almost completely new library staff, who were ready immediately to support this project: Samantha Quiñon Snair, Carrie Evans, Andy Neuman, and Lili Knutson; the wonderful Melissa Hamel in Duplications; the Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP), whose From the Punked-Out Files of the Queer Zine Archive Project residency zine inspired this zine project; the Division of Academic Affairs for support to photocopy the zine; and everyone who built and maintained the HCZC over the years!
Thank you especially to the fabulous students of HACU 247 Fall 2025 whose creative and curious work you see here!
-Michele Hardesty, December 2025
NewsletterNov_2025_FINAL.pdfPage updated
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