Zinester Ethics session report back

The first session I attended at the Zine Librarians (un)Conference was about how zine libraries serve the zine making community, as opposed to how we serve historians and the general reading public. We specifically asked non-librarian zine makers to attend this conference in order to get their feedback on how we're doing and what we could do better.

As with my report back on the ACRL Preconference Unconference, my notes are kind of brief, and will surely be bettered by those of the official note taker.

• What do you do if a zinester requests that you remove his/her/hir zine from your library's collection?
  This has happened at the Multnomah County Library and the Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest in Portland, OR and the City Library in Salt Lake, UT.
  SLC offered to redact the personal information in the zine, but since the zine publisher never responded didn't do it.
  The Archives respected the author, a trans man's wish to remove work that no longer reflected his identity.
  I suggested that at Barnard I would immediately accede to a request to remove a zine from our circulating collection, but would try to talk the publisher into letting us keep a copy in the archives, perhaps with a do not all access to until x date.
• Someone suggested that we have stated policies when zines are donated, a gift response form
• Discussion of to whom we're more beholden, history or the zine community
• Should people be able to pull zines that no longer reflect their current views, zines that they made when they were teens?
• Zines could be used as evidence in court, e.g. Ted Kaczynski tracts archived at the Wisconsin Historical Society
• Do authors have the right to unring the bell, trampling reader's rights (compared to Cat Stevens wanting to remove his records from every store in the world), importance of zines as cultural knowledge
• One zinester recommended case by case evaluation, rather than cut and dried unappealable policy
• I wanted to know how folks felt about scholars quoting zines in research. The response was that it's good manners to notify them, even better to ask first.
• Librarians should communicate that to scholars
• A zinester: Please don't bind zines like you would a magazine
• Weeding/discard: how should we handle that? Give to another library (need a centralized donation system between libraries), cataloging record should indicate where the zine went. It's okay to put zines in a giveaway box.
• Photocopying--is that okay? Try to find out per zinester. Might be okay to copy, not okay to sell.
• Sharing contact info, okay if it's published in their zines
• Zine programs can be useful for ducating about and enforcing copyright/fair use discussions
• We should develop standard etiquette a la the ALA Code of Ethics, get approval from zine community, guidelines--best way to reach zine community? We Make Zines: issues, how zines were acquired (from the publisher, from a distro, via a third party donation), publication year could be factors
• Getting permission from zinesters to include their work in our collections (too much work)
• How much we'd respect a cease and desist, perhaps based on how the zine was acquired
• Be clear that we respect zinesters' input
• Open letter to zine community, invitation to a conversation
• Digitizing zines, covers only okay? Covers should be apologize later, not ask first, the rest of the zine the other way around
• Copyright is an important distinction when explaining what zines are
• As zines, zine libraries get more popular, they are more vulnerable to cooptation
• Zinesters proud to have their zines in libraries
• What if zinesters dislike description or categorization? Librarians would welcome suggestions, CIP data
• Zinesters--reaction to someone digitizing their zines. Totally gross vs. ego stroking? Depends on the zine. (My opinion—totally gross.)
• For ILL, include copyright statement
• Draft letter to zine publishers, perhaps publish on zinelibraries.info
• What do zine librarians want from zine publishers--date, copyright preference, serial/monograph status, subscriptions, making it easier to pay for (checks from libraries?)
• Libraries should have an online form for donations--for metadata