University of Iowa Libraries Begin to Digitize Decades of Fanzines

Every library has a sci-fi section, but not many can compete with the collection of speculative fiction that has been growing steadily at the University of Iowa (UI) in recent years. While the UI Libraries boast an impressive collection of works by notable authors in the genre, it’s not the focus of the UI’s universe-spanning sci-fi collections.

A selection of Hevelin fanzines

Every library has a sci-fi section, but not many can compete with the collection of speculative fiction that has been growing steadily at the University of Iowa (UI) in recent years. While the UI Libraries boast an impressive collection of works by notable authors in the genre, it’s not the focus of UI’s universe-spanning sci-fi collections. Instead, Peter Balestrieri, Curator of Science Fiction and Popular Culture Collections for UI Libraries, and his colleagues are working to preserve the writings and records of fan communities. While these fandoms have become increasingly accessible and well known since the advent of digital communication, they are nearly as old as the genre itself—and in some cases, nearly as storied. “Our collecting emphasis on fandoms and fan-created/related materials is solid and ongoing, as is our connection to fan communities and our dedication to helping them preserve and provide access to their histories for research and pleasure,” Balestrieri told Library Journal. Those connections to groups like The Organization for Transformative Works, and the library’s emphasis on, for lack of a better term, fan-service, are helping the new collections to snowball. In just the last few years, the University of Iowa’s libraries have received numerous collections from lifelong sci-fi fans and avid collectors, amounting to thousands of volumes of both professionally produced titles like the long-running sci-fi magazine Analog, and fan-made content. Most recently, Sioux Falls collector Allen Lewis donated to UI his collection of 17,500 books worth an estimated three quarters of a million dollars. Most are hard bound, first editions, first printings. Now, the pulps and passion projects alike will be getting properly preserved and digitized so they can be made accessible to readers and researchers the world over. The library’s digitization efforts are led by Digital Project Librarian Laura Hampton. She’s just a few weeks into the first leg of the project, digitizing some 10,000 titles from the collection of Rusty Hevelin, a collector and genre aficionado whose collection came to the library in 2012 . You can follow along with Hampton’s work on the Hevelin Collection tumblr

ZINE FANS

“These fanzines paint an almost outrageously clear picture of early fandom,” said Hampton. “If you read through every single fanzine in our collection, you would have a pretty solid idea of all the goings-on that shaped early fandom—the major players, the dramas, the developments and changes, and who instigated and opposed them. There is an incredible cultural history here that cannot be replicated.” Labors of love driven by community rather than commerce, fanzines were often printed on the cheap using technology like mimeographs and hectographs, and held together will staples or tape, said Hampton, noting that “all the material things that make a fanzine a fanzine are also what make them difficult to preserve.” Decades after they were produced, preserving these magazines is both a challenge and a priority for Hampton. High acid paper is flaking and finely rendered illustrations are fading, and with them, the records of thriving fan communities stretching back as far as the 1930s, predating heated debates over Kirk vs Picard by decades. These communities were as lively as any message board conversation or LiveJournal debate. That preservation is especially important in the case of sci-fi, saidHampton, because of the genre’s rich history of fan interaction and contribution. “This is not an overview or analysis of science fiction; these are the very objects that built it, publications made by fans for fans, in basements and living rooms across the world—this is the material history of the genre,” she said of the Hevelin collection and others like it. “Science fiction is an immense tapestry, and all of these publications must be recognized as threads in order to better understand the whole picture.” Once the titles are digitized, they’ll become the basis of a searchable database that UI is counting on volunteers to develop through crowdsourced transcription, a method that has proven successful for other similar projects under the auspices of UI Libraries' DIYHistory project. That database, Balestrieri hopes, will be a valuable resource for the growing number of scholars interested in studying not just science fiction, but the way that fans interact with the genre and how those interactions have evolved over time. “These fandoms are increasingly impossible to ignore,” said Balestrieri. “And the move to study them seriously grows with every PhD candidate that gains permission to write her dissertation on zombies.”