Basically I already wrote up the whole thing on Zine Librarians, but just in case you don't happen to already have that blog in your feed reader...Zine Reviews are coming to Library Journal! In March! Yay!!!!!!!!
The reviewers are from the Zine Librarians Yahoo Group. The hardest part about this whole deal is wanting to keep the process collaborative and in the zine spirit while at the same time knowing my name is on the column, so I also want to be true to my own vision. As we know it's impossible to please everyone and attempts to do so usually yield lowest common denominator results, but it's still important in the context of zinedom to try to consense on things, or at least get tons of feedback.
In order to take advantage of the collective wisdom, I asked the participating reviewers a bunch of questions. The first three Q&As (questions listed below) are already posted on ZineLibraries.info, and the rest are coming soon. I found the discussion to be incredibly mature and thoughtful from this group of fairly new and young librarians, library support staff, and zine fans.
These are the issues we discussed:
- If someone edited a whole column, say on something like "zines by teens" or "transgender zines" or whatever, they would get paid $75, btw. People who review one zine get no compensation. If that factors in at all. Which version do you prefer?
- Typically reviews say for what type of library they recommend the material (e.g. public, large academic, anywhere the author has a following, etc.). I assume we'll do that, but where it gets sticky is when we start specifying age groups. How do you think that should be handled?
- How should we list ordering info for each zine? Just give the publisher's info? Distros? All, or just the main one? Do we include zines even if they have no online purchasing option?
- What are the other elements that should be present in each review?
- Should we run bad reviews, or only good ones?
- What are your other thoughts on this?
- Would it be too annoying if I set up another discussion list for this discussion?