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Graphzines at the Bibliothèque Forney

Today I got a tour of the beautiful bibliothèque Forney, housed in the castlelike building, from a person who was interning with me two years ago, and who now works there.

Bibliothèque Forney is specialized in the subject of art and there you can find books, magazines, films and other materials suited for researchers or people interested in art.

There were many interesting things to discover in the library (no ghosts though...), but what captured my attention was a MASSIVE collection of graphzines. I knew about fanzines, but I didn't know that there exists a further distinction in this format (I should research more about this). I was blown away by the quantity and orgazation of the collection.

The collection is housed in three rows of shelves, one exhibition table and two boxes. I didn't have too much time to look and discuss the organization since the collection is close to the study desks, that were filled by students, but I saw some of them were classified by country, and some were classified by author or "publisher".

My guide explained that the person who started this collection got promoted and doesn't work in this library anymore, and couple of other librarians now manage the collection, so unfortunatelly I couldn't talk with the person who created this collection. It would be interesting to find out how the collection is built, are these free materials, or paid, what is the criteria to adding a graphzine to the collection etc. I started collecting zines recently, and I would like to organize a little library at home. In any case, I managed to take a couple of minutes to look at the graphzines before we continued the tour.

I always thought zines were a part of infoshops and alternative libraries, but this discovery surprised and excited me! I'm looking forward to discovering more about the world of zines in the libraries.