After much anticipation, the UCCS Kraemer Family Library has launched the Kraemer Family Library Zine Collection this fall. The collection includes the works of UCCS students and outside community members.
UCCS Outreach and Instruction Librarian Liz Brown was a big help in putting together the collection. “The word ‘zine’ comes from the [shortening] of the word magazine,” she said. “You can think of it as a mini magazine that people are making because it’s about something they really care about and want other people to know about.”
The Zine Collection Launch Party and Zine Workshop through UCCS are part of driving excitement toward the Pikes Peak Zine Festival. For the first time, the annual Colorado Springs celebration will be held at UCCS in Berger Hall on Oct. 5 at 1 p.m. with free admission. The festival hopes to bring together a larger community to promote the diversity of passion through zine art.
According to Brown, the library has been looking for works by marginalized creators themed around the values the library and campus want to represent. Zine creators include people of color, queer people, disabled people and more.
Brown added that some of the selected zines include themes of “indigenous storytelling, which is something we really support here at the library, wellness and mental health.”
At the beginning of the fall 2023 semester, the library presented the opportunity for UCCS students to create their own zines and have the chance to add them to the library’s collection.
“We got a $10,000 grant through the Radical Librarian Institute last August,” Brown said. “Some of that money [went to] students to make zines for a collection we wanted to establish. We also used that money to buy different collections from off campus.”
Some of the UCCS zines were created through class programs such as WEST Professor Tre Wentling’s trans* studies class that created “Trans* Joy: Past/ Present/Future.”
Wentling previously had his students create individual zines in a media consumption class, enabling them to present their unique passions and interpretations. In his trans* studies course, Wentling was inspired by the possibility of having students make one shared zine.
“This time I wanted [students] to do it more collaboratively and unite around trans scholarism and trans activism and thinking together,” Wentling said. “I just liked how it forced them to think more broadly, comprehensively and [focus on] how to make something more robust.”
International studies senior Lauren Boyd is one of the creators of the zines in the library’s new collection. Boyd was first introduced to zines when she helped make the zine for the Asian American Communities class.
“I heard about this opportunity [through] MOSAIC,” Boyd said, discussing her zine “Okinawa.” “I had a lot of fun with it. I love making things and I spent a couple hours and days just coloring and pasting things together. My grandma is half Okinawa. It was [kind of] an homage to her.”
“Love is Resistance,” a zine focusing on mental health, was created by fall 2023 sociology graduate Ally Hernandez.
“I took a political violence class that [kind of] inspired it,” Hernandez said. “Before I graduated, I saw a poster just to make a Zine. I always wanted to do it.”
Though the topics of zines vary, Brown said, “it takes you 15 minutes to finish one. It’s not something you need to take home and study and pore over for the most part.”
The zines will be stored by the library comics section on the second floor near the South entrance. Students can only browse them from the library, and faculty members can check them out.
A collection of Zine works made by students and faculty. Photo by Josiah Dolan.