Discovering Zines at the New York Public Library

What is a zine? Zines are easier to describe than define. They’re do-it-yourself handmade magazines that come in different shapes, sizes and formats.

Many are handwritten, photocopied, and stapled, while some may be professionally printed magazine-like publications. Each zine is a unique form of personal self-expression, made for love rather than profit, and can cover just about any subject you can think of.

The New York Public Library houses a historic zine collection, and continues to acquire current zines, collecting those broadly focused on New York City and from New York City creators. 

How to discover and find zines at NYPL

Visit the Dewitt Wallace Periodical Room to browse a list of zines shelved in that room at the information desk. 

You can also find zines in the Library catalog (seen below) by searching a specific title or any of these subjects: zines, fanzines, underground press, and little magazines.

Resources for additional zine research 

Books

The Riot Grrrl Collection, edited by Lisa Darms

Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture by Stephen Duncombe

Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism by Alison Piepmeier, foreword by Andi Zeisler 

Zine Scene by Francesca Lia Block and Hillary Carlip

Fanzines by Teal Triggs, with over 750 illustrations
 

E-Resources

• Independent Voices: A digital collection of the magazines, journals, and newspapers of the alternative and small press archives of participating libraries
   
• ProQuest Research Library: Provides articles from periodicals covering arts, business, children, education, health, humanities, law, multicultural studies, sciences, social sciences, and general interest. Full text is available for nearly two-thirds of its titles.
   
• Alternative Press Index Archive: An index to alternative press published in the United States and around the world
   
• The PERiodical Source Index (PERSI): This resource, accessible through the Find My Past database, indexes thousands of historical and genealogical publications, and contains more than two million entries from these sources. Coverage is centered on publications from the United States and Canada, though periodicals from Britain, Ireland, and Australia are also included.
   
• ZineWiki: an open-source encyclopedia devoted to zines and independent media. It covers the history, production, distribution and culture of the small press. (external website, not part of NYPL)

A subset of the zine collection is housed in the DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building with current periodicals in Room 108. Anyone with a New York Public Library card may access zines in the collection.

Zines stored in the Library's onsite stacks or offsite storage facility are served in the Rose Main Reading Room at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, in Room 315.