British Library Zine Collection

The British Library is a national legal deposit library, in London, UK. It also has reading rooms (and most of its storage) in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, UK.

Notably its collections hold countercultural, music, women's and football zines as well as small press comics and graphic novels. It's collection is predominantly of UK zines but has an increasing amount of zines from other countries.

Anyone over 18 with ID can access the British Library collections, but you need to register for a free Reader Pass.

Legal Deposit

As legal deposit regulations stipulate that all published items in the UK supply a copy for deposit at the British Library (with the other five legal deposit libraries able to request a copy should it meet the needs of their collections). Debbie Cox writing about this in 2018 recognises the benefits, but also qualms zinesters may have about this; legally being required to deposit items with the state and the counter-copyright cut & paste nature of zines not neatly fitting this concept[1].

Small Friendly Dog zine of the 1970s/1980s was previously called Inferno, but changed its name after been chased to send copies for legal deposit.

Donations

To donate your zine to the British Library, see the information on their website [2].

The British Library sometimes attend events to collect zines, most recently at the 2023 South London Comic & Zine Fair they had a donations box.

Zines in collection

• 4 bleats to the baah
• Aggamengmong Moggie
• All That Matters Is What Makes You Happy
• Antisocial Scarlet
• Dial M for Merthyr
• Hens tae watch oot fur!
• Livor Mortis Zine
• Nancy
• Oh Cardiff, up yours!
• Riot Girl London
• Sniffin' Glue
• Unskinny

External links

• 1. Cox, D. (2018). Developing and raising awareness of the zine collections at the British Library. Art Libraries Journal, 43(2), 77-81. doi:10.1017/alj.2018.5
• 2. Zines at the British Library information page
• 3. Roulston, F. (2016). BL Blog: Zine but not heard: printed ephemera and research