Kirsty Fife (National Science and Media Museum)

The archival value of zines (self-published pamphlets often produced by radical and marginalised communities) as historical records has been well documented in academic research. Red Chidgey refers to zines as “sources of advocacy and empowerment for those who make them, an attempt to bear witness to their own lives” (Chidgey, 2006: p. 6). As evidence of networks, cultures, linguistics and experiences, zines often exist as the only representation of ephemeral and otherwise undocumented spaces, which makes them incredibly valuable as primary source material.

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Following the establishment of large zine collections at heritage spaces including the Women’s Library, British Library, Wellcome Library and Tate, zines are now regularly collected and used in curating, collecting and learning at heritage organisations. But what does it mean to archive and use zines in an institutional heritage context? This paper considers the implications of archiving zine practice and cultures – anti-institutional in its nature – in institutional spaces. I argue that heritage workers should be critically thinking about and (where possible) incorporating the politics of the culture from which zines originate into protocols for cataloguing, access, interpretation and use of these materials.

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Kirsty Fife is currently working as Curator of Library and Archives and the National Science and Media Museum, where she is in the process of setting up a zine collection. Outside of her paid work, she has published zines extensively, particularly exploring the intersections of feminism, history, class, trauma and femme identity. She is also active as a feminist punk musician and organiser of Weirdo Zine Fest, an annual self-publishing fair centring on cultural production by radical and marginalised communities.