Girls Rock Jacksonville at Power Hour at Brew

Girls Rock Jacksonville Outreach 06/15 and 6/22

On June 15^th and 22nd Sara Radovic and Ryan Fix from the Popular/Fiction department, along with Erin Tuzuner from Adult Programming partnered with local organization Girls Rock Jacksonville to promote JPL’s Zine collection.  Girls Rock Jacksonville is an organization who’s “mission is to cultivate self-empowerment and positive identity development in girls, and gender non-conforming youth through music experimentation, DIY media and peer collaboration”. The event, a pre camp get together for employees, donors, and volunteers was held at Brew Coffee House in 5pts.  During the event Sara and Ryan staffed an information table set up with an assortment of zines, and promotional materials for JPL summer programs.  Attendees were surprised and impressed to hear that the library has a zine collection.  It was a great time partnering with the crew from Girls Rock Jacksonville, and we will do it again soon.

Girls Rock Power Hour

We’ll be hanging out with a bunch of zines at the Girls Rock Jacksonville Power Hour! So come see us at Brew, June 15th and 22nd.  Click here for more information about Girls Rock Jacksonville.

Darth Vader Reads Everything Dies v.6 by Box Brown

We set up a table at Art Walk last week and Darth Vader came by to check out the Zine Collection.  It was probably the title that caught his eye, but we think he really enjoyed Everything Dies v.6 by Box Brown.

International Zine Month: San Marco Loves Zines!

Our friends at the San Marco library have caught International Zine Month fever! For this month only, come read and check out the zines on display there. More branch-ing out to come!

Zine Machine at Gregory Drive Elementary!

Thanks to art teacher Ed Saulk and media specialist Jack Betancourt, we got to spend nearly a full school day at Gregory Drive Elementary teaching six sessions of Zine Machine classes to 3rd – 5th graders.   The all day Arts Festival event they put on was amazing and we were very glad to be a part of it.

Some classes got inspired by Chris Van Dusen’s “If I Built a Car” before designing a car of their own, while other classes reviewed the elements of superheroes and villains before designing one of their own.  They even had our “Read Zines” poster up in the media center!

The material the kids created will be used for the next 5 issues of Zine Machine, available next month in the Main Library’s Children’s Department.   The library at Gregory Drive was also very excited about cataloging the new issues for it’s students to check out.   The kids were also very enthusiastic about coming to the public library and checking out the zine they contributed too.  Everyone wins!

Joe Berg Seminar

Thanks again to the students of Jacksonville’s Joe Berg Society for being so interested in the Zine Collection!  Hopefully now we’ve got another 80 rad teens stoked on the collection and the library.  They had really good questions and checked out some of my favorite zines.

For more information on our new favorite group of high school students, go here.

Branching Out

Hey friends in Riverside, Willowbranch Library is hosting a party for the 80th anniversary of the branch opening. The Zine Collection will have a small display set up so stop by and check out a few zines.  There will be games, arts, crafts and face painting for the kids.  Celebrate local history in Riverside and support your public library.

That’s How We Roll

Matt from the Bike Jax blog did a post about the zine collection at the Riverside Arts Market. Check it out here.

Thanks Matt! See you again at RAM on May 8th.

Zine Mobile At RAM

We’ll be seeing you at the Riverside Arts Market this weekend!  The Zine Committee will be there via bike with the Zine Mobile in tow.  It’s a great chance to meet us and talk zine.  And you can stock up on your favorite zines, for free of course, with your library card.  If you don’t have a library card stop by the table and get one – that’s free too.   Our table is located right across from Bike Jax’s valet bike parking.  So park that bike you just got tuned up at Zen Cog and come say hello!

Isn’t RAM becoming a great place for one-stop shopping of what? I know it’s where i get my fresh veggie every weekend.  Now it’s a place to check out zines from the library. And remember, you can always return library items to any JPL Library.

But what else besides zines? Well we still have some copies of our limited Black Kids zine posters.  Even though those are flyin’ off the stacks, we’ll have some to giveaway at the Art Market.   And what’s that? We have awesome buttons to give away too? Yes, indeed.  See you Saturday.

Harvest of Hope Outreach

Big crowds at Harvest of Hope!

We had a table at the Harvest of Hope Festival this year on Friday, March 12th and Saturday, March 13th.   So if you are still wondering why about half of the 10,000 or so people at the event had those ‘I Love My Public Library’ sticker, now you know – it was us.

Our table at Harvest of Hope.

But chances are you visited our table and got a sticker for yourself.  We were giving away the first poster in our series (of the band Black Kids) and spotlighting essential information and upcoming events within the our library system.  We were amazed at how many people already knew about the zine collection and use it frequently.  We’re glad we got to meet some of those veteran library patrons and turn on what it is we do to some new people as well.  

We got to meet lots of other organizations – some of which were places and people that published zines we already had in our collection!  It was great getting to know people from Civic Media Center, Gainesville’s Books to Prisoners, Music Saves Lives, Zendik Farms, Student Farmworker Alliance,  Dream Activist, Farmworker Alliance, The Fine Print, The Beehive Collective, Free Radio Gainesville and Zombie Bikes.  Here’s a few of us enjoying the latest cyclical exploits of the Zombie Bike crew.

 

And here are some more photo highlights from the weekend.

Our new friends at the Beehive Collective, talking about their art.

We were excited to see Sam Jones's 'Cassette' band play. Especially after she had just played at our library!

The funnel cake was huge.

Zombie Bikers Joe and Gary. They'll be teaching a class to kids at the Main Library on bike safety April 10th.

We did a photoshoot with the band Defiance Ohio for our next poster in the series!