A List of Things Found Inside Library Zines

Our lending shelf has about four hundred zines. When they come back, they sometimes come back with company.

Not everything we make becomes a zine. Some of it stays as a scrap: a half-page of lettering, a collage that never found its text, a joke that only works on the back of an envelope.

From the cutting mat

• A ransom-note headline with no article
• Three collage faces made from the same magazine
• A map of the bus route drawn from memory
• Half a comic about a haunted copier

We keep a drawer for these. Every few months we empty it onto the floor and see what fits together. About a third of our issues started that way.

Every issue starts as a scrap in a drawer.

Keep or compost

This post is one of those drawer-emptying sessions, written down so we remember what was in there.

Everything in this post works just as well at a library copier or a corner copy shop. You don't need a studio, just a flat table and about an hour.