The Latest News from the Zine Archive

In December of 2007, Hugo House made the decision to move the 17,000 zines in our archive out of the basement and into a new space on the second floor of the House.

For some time volunteers, staff and community members had been aware of the basement’s shortcomings as a library space—it is isolated from the rest of the House, hard to find and often invisible to Hugo House visitors. The basement was also a less than ideal (i.e. moisture-prone) atmosphere for storing a whole lot of paper. Then came the extraordinary rains of December, that deposited two inches of water on the floor in the zine archive. Hugo House staff spent a wet afternoon rescuing low-lying zines from possible water damage, and wet vacc’ing. Our facilities manager, Katinka, brought in an industrial-strength dehumidifier to speed up the drying process—and we made the horrifying discovery that no matter how long we ran the thing, no matter how many times we emptied the water out of it, it continued to fill to capacity every night. The zines themselves were saturated with moisture.

At this point we realized we had to make a move. Now. Fortunately, a large space on the second floor that had been rented out was available, and we made the decision to turn it into the new zine archive. It was dry, it was centrally located—it even had windows! A perfect space—now all we had to do was move 17,000 publications, and everything that went with them, up several flights of stairs to the opposite end of the building.

Thanks to ZAPP volunteers old and new, we did it. Fifty-five boxes full of zines, several large bookshelves, tables, chairs, zine-making supplies, typewriters—over the course of several nights of back-breaking labor up four flights of stairs, the entire zine archive moved upstairs. The task was monumental and we couldn’t have done it without the many, many members of the community who have contributed to ZAPP over the years.

But the move is just the first step. Right now, the zines are still all in boxes waiting for shelving to be set up, for unpacking to begin and cataloging to continue. To do this right will take time, and unfortunately it will also require limiting access to the collection until it is appropriately set up.

What this means is that we won’t be accepting donations of publications to the archive until April. It also means that we won’t be scheduling any open hours for the public until further notice.

But even though the archive is closed temporarily to the public, we are actively seeking volunteers to come help us get it open again as soon as possible. If you are interested in helping to build shelving, unpack and reorganize zines, set up the space and catalog the collection, please contact our volunteer coordinator, Kate Lebo (katelebo@hugohouse.org).

If you are interested in being a zine archive intern, click [here] for more information.

And if you have any questions at all about the zine archive, contact program director, Alix Wilber at alixwilber@hugohouse.org

We’ll be providing periodic updates on the zine archive’s progress, so check back for more news.