EZL Collection Development and Acquisitions Policy - Volume 1 

October 2022

Collection Policy

Edinburgh Zine Library was established in 2017 and is an archive and reference library of self-published material currently housed in the Art and Design Library at Edinburgh Central Library. Our aim is to preserve and increase access to zines from Edinburgh and around the world, as well as promoting zines, zine making and DIY culture through workshops and other events. 

What is a zine?  

For our collections, we have defined a zine as a DIY, low-cost publication that is made by an individual or group. Zines exist outside of mainstream media and contemporary publishing, and occupy a deliberately anti-capitalist stance. We understand that definitions can be antithetical to zine making so do not apply stringent standards to our collections with medium, size or material. 

What do we collect? 

As we require the zine maker’s explicit permission to include a zine in the library, our current collection focus is contemporary zines (i.e. made within the last 10 years). We are a donation-based archive and currently only collect physical zines because we only have storage for physical media. Anything donated must be a zine and not a book/artist book*. We do not collect anything that contravenes our safe space policy, you can read that here. 

*Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works that utilise the form of the book. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one of a kind objects.

Copyright

Zine makers retain copyright over their zines and we will never profit from them or use them in any way that has not been agreed upon with the maker (i.e., share on social media). We use the Creative Commons licence framework, see more about it here: https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/

Disposal

We will never sell unwanted zines for profit and will always try to send zines back to the maker in the first instance. Our catalogue record is open to amendments or changes i.e., moving zines to a different category, adding additional content notes as appropriate or updating names of zine makers if they now use a different one. Any doubles of zines are used as a EZL resource in workshops or events, or passed onto other zine libraries, depending on the preference of the zine maker. Zine makers can remove their zines from the collection at any time, for any reason.