Got space for thousands of zines? The Papercut Zine Library—which lends an unusual collection of 7,000 zines, indie books, periodicals, and audio/visual materials in addition to hosting community events—is looking for a new home in the Boston/Cambridge area. The collective-run, free lending library lost its space in Cambridge’s Democracy Center on August 15. It had operated there since May 2005.

As outlined on the collective’s Myspace page, Papercut is looking for at least 180 square feet of space in an accessible area. Joining an existing community/arts/organizing space is an option, and so is renting low-cost commercial space. There’s just one absolute: “that the freedom to make decisions about the library’s internal operation stay within our collective. That is, we are not interested in another library absorbing our collective if it means the collective will not be involved.”

Anyone who has ideas or tips should get in touch with Papercut.

Source: Papercut Zine Library

(Thanks, BoingBoing.)

Image by gruntzooki, licensed under Creative Commons.

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is zine librarian Alycia Sellie. We asked her for five links and here's what she came up with. 

Zine World:  Zine World is the most well-known print source for reviews and information about zines, and it's web presence is formidable as well with a comprehensive list of links for everything from postal rates, upcoming events and zine news.

Queer Zine Archive Project: QZAP is a free digital zine archive that strives to "preserve queer zines and make them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest DIY publishing and underground queer communities." This site is beautifully designed, perpetually growing with new titles, extremely inspiring, and an amazing historical record.

Zine Wiki: The amazing thing about Zine Wiki is that the phlethora of information about zines already there is just a start; the fantastic thing is that anyone can add and edit (meta)data about their zine, or add themselves to the extensive list of zinesters!

We Make Zines Ning: For more meta and social networking (when your stapling arm gets too tired), the We Make Zines Ning is a place (that isn't those other sites that we all know too well) to promote your zine, find out about zine events and even friend your local zine librarian.

Nobody Cares about your Stupid Zine Podcast: Here's a new zine project for your ears, ipods and RSS readers: Alex Wrekk (of Stolen Sharpie Revolution) and Mark Parker (Independent Publishing Resource Center librarian and creator of zinethug.com) team together to interview zinesters far and wide, and I am looking forward to the next installment!

Bio: Alycia Sellie is an academic art librarian living in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. After participating in the first ever Zine Librarians (un)Conference in Seattle, Washington, she is busy planning the NYC Zine Fest to be held at the Brooklyn Lyceum in June 2009, and can be reached at http://alycia.brokenja.ws/.

Previous Alt Wire Guests:   Davy Rothbart, Roger White, Dan Sinker, Phil Yu, Matt Novak,  Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

In a move seen by many Environmental Protection Agency staffers as an effort to “suppress information on environmental and public health-related topics,” the Bush administration took a wrecking ball to the EPA’s network of technical libraries in 2006, locking the doors of some libraries and removing scads of materials from collections. Now the outrage expressed by scientists and librarians seems to have had an effect. High Country News reports that at least four of the closed libraries have been reopened and access to some library holdings restored.

But how much damage was done in the interim? According to HCN, the public, agency staffers, and outside researchers lost access to thousands of documents that were moved into repositories where they would supposedly be digitized. But those repositories “have grown into giant information dumps whose contents will remain un-cataloged for years to come.”

A press release by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) quotes its associate director, Carol Goldberg, saying that even with the reopenings, “EPA will still accord its own scientists and the public less access to information than it did back in 2005,” and the closures leave in their “wake scattered and incomplete collections.” Among the libraries the administration locked up was a specialized chemical library, which was closed “with no notice to the scientists who rely on those holdings to analyze new pesticides and toxic chemicals,” according to HCN. PEER says a “small portion of holdings” from that library will now be available at an EPA headquarters library as a “special Chemical Collection.”

Much remains unknown about the fallout from the closures, according to president of the American Library Association, Jim Retting, whose congressional testimony on the matter is quoted by HCN. Retting told Congress:

Unfortunately, there continues to be a lot that we don't know: exactly what materials have been being shipped around the country, whether there are duplicate materials in other EPA libraries, whether these items have been or will be digitized, and whether a record is being kept of what is being dispersed and what is being discarded. We remain concerned that years of research and studies about the environment may be lost forever.

Image by Joe Crawford, licensed under Creative Commons.

An economic downturn could be a mixed blessing for U.S. libraries. On the one hand, recession drives up library usage, as more people borrow—instead of buy—books. Libraries also provide information (and computer access) for job seekers, as well as cash-strapped citizens who are learning about a more frugal DIY ethic. Both the New York Times and National Public Radio have recently reported on this phenomenon.

Caveat lector, though. As we saw in 2003, tough economic times can also spur budget cuts, putting a strain on already-thin public and school library resources. Better-but-not-best-case-scenario, libraries will have to serve increased demand on static budgets. The FISH Bits blog, all about “creating great school and public libraries,” has some smart thoughts on how libraries can thrive during this crunch time.

During World War I, a British soldier known only by his initials, JM, kept detailed visual journals of his life in the trenches of France and Belgium. The journals are filled with picturesque battlefield watercolors and wartime carnage but can also sport a bitter humor. One image, captioned “A battle in Flanders as pictured by the daily papers,” shows us a well-organized battle. The next, “Not pictured by the daily papers,” gives us a heap of dead bodies against a washed-out, smoky backdrop. The entire sketchbooks have been digitized by the Canadian University of Victoria’s libraries for us to peer through, giving an unprecedented visceral look into a bloody chapter of history.

—Brendan Mackie

Michael Gorra offers a personalized tour of New England's town libraries at The Smart Set, weaving history lessons with descriptions of some of his favorite sites. He’s the perfect person to do so: For years Gorra has been stopping to visit town libraries throughout New England, exploring their histories, modern-day collections, and continuing significance for the townspeople. “Every one of the libraries I’ve collected,” he writes, "has had that essential quality, that sense of peace and purpose.” Check out the slideshow, too, for some cool library pics.

—Julie Dolan