zine, [zeen] noun. 1. abbr. of fanzine; 2. any amateurly-published periodical. Oxford Reference

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Thursday, September 13, 2012

from The eloquent page by Elaine Bulluss

Just a scroll lot of fun!

I recently catalogued two scrolls and a zine in a typewriter.  Much earlier I also catalogued a zine in the shape of a paper plane. So zines are not always in book form. These are part of our Nick Henderson Zine Collection.
The paper plane is titled: Space people team initiative : together everybody achieves more
After cataloguing, of course I couldn’t resist and had to test this plane out (once) and yes it flew fine! A winner creatively and aerodynamically!
The scrolls are a bit of a challenge for reading, as soon as you unroll them they also go flying (were they watching that paper plane and getting ideas?). Maybe a very good reason why scrolls aren’t used today! They are titled Germany 2008 by Vanessa Berry and Alice by Alice McDonald.
Alice was written in a typed script and there was a spacing issue with the letter T. Which always makes me curious, was this deliberate, or not?
Now my favourite, that zine in a typewriter. My record for this zine is titled: 1:25 pm City park, under tree. Raining. It challenged me as I was actually cataloguing the zine, and the paper typewriter is a prop to showcase the zine. It is made from a series of images of a typewriter, printed in black and white, cut out in sections and pasted to an inner cardboard frame. It is just over four inches square and an inch high. The zine is rolled round the platen.
Now, how do we store something like this on our shelves so it doesn’t get damaged? I went to our expert Preservation staff to ask about the housing of the typewriter, and a phase box was made by Erika Mordek to keep it safe and snug. Here are her photos of the zine before and during boxing.
1:25 pm. City park, under tree. Raining.1:25 pm. City park, under tree. Raining.

Boxed paper typewriterBoxed paper typewriter
There is an interesting blog entry by Robert Messenger about the I am Typewriter Festival which was held in Melbourne by the Sticky Instute in 2011 that has some great shots of some paper typewriters.
What really surprises me is that some of the photos look amazingly like real typewriters.

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