Happy International Zine Month!

This blog post highlighting a new initiative in RDDSx comes to you from RDDS student worker extraordinaire Vicky Sun. Vicky is a rising junior in the Wharton School majoring in Marketing and Business Analytics and has been a great help as we launched a new tech and data zine rack in RDDSx this past spring semester. Come by to learn more and create your own zines during our upcoming pop-up event for New Student Orientation on August 20th, 2025 from 12-2pm. We hope to see you there!

-Cynthia Heider

Over the course of the spring semester, RDDS rolled out its own zine rack, inspired by Amanda Visconti who created the Zine Bakery in UVA's Scholar Lab. While the Zine Bakery didn’t have zine shaped desserts, it was more so a “café” for people to stop by, pick up a zine from a well curated collection, and perhaps sit down to read about something new that isn’t search engine optimized. With the hustle of campus life and the race to catch up to the newest technology and innovation, it’s easy to lose focus on thoughtful discussions about the implications of the changing world. RDDS’ zine rack goal is to be that space of quiet intellectual stimuli for impactful conversations that will go beyond its corner in RDDSx and Van Pelt Library.

As a student studying business, I am taught to be on the constant lookout for industry updates and current news in order to make informed decisions about investments, consumer behavior, and the overall global market. Being on the team for RDDSx’s zine rack allowed me to think critically of what’s missing in the discussion of tech and data, the experiential experience of a zine rack, and the engagement metrics of an inventory spreadsheet to better understand the community.

This project started well before I joined RDDS as an outreach assistant but the majority of the preparation happened in fall 2024. Many members of the RDDS team chipped in along the way to give zine recommendations, fold and cut zines, and sit in brainstorming meetings, but Cynthia Heider, our Public Digital Scholarship Librarian, led many of these initiatives and the zine rack wouldn’t be as successful without her leadership.

Project Timeline

• Pre-Fall 2024: the idea was up in the air but lacked project space and manpower for it.
• Fall 2024: 
  • A Box folder was created to compile interesting zines from RDDS members (Jajwalya Karajgikar, our Applied Data Science Librarian, was a big supporter!) and online resources – extensively from the Zine Bakery Catalog which was created by Amanda Visconti. This catalog made searching for relevant zines easier depending on topic, cost, print color, and etc easier. 
  • A rack was ordered based on criteria such as being movable, sturdy, tall so it takes up less floor space.
• Spring 2025 
  • Cynthia created a guide on how to format, print, and fold zines because they come in various sizes and have particular cuts.
  • RDDS held a zine folding party for our first batch of 20 different zines that were organized by a code number to keep track and replenish them efficiently. Most zines were stocked between 2-4 copies each depending on initial estimation of popularity.
  • The zines were pinned with clothespins to the rack which was placed next to a whiteboard on the right wall of RDDSx. The whiteboard featured some zines from the Penn community and encouraged people to take the zines for free.
  • To keep track of the zine inventory, I started organizing the zines on a spreadsheet that accounted for the incoming and outgoing traffic. This allowed me to extract valuable metrics on zine performance and community engagement.
  • After a successful first semester launch, RDDS came together to reflect on this project experience and brainstormed goals and strategies to improve the rack for next semester.

Tech and Data Zines

From our collection of zines into the shared Box folder, the team looked at the range of topics and selected some that we thought were important to share with the community. Those zines were largely related to ethical technology, surveillance, data privacy, algorithmic bias, and publishing freedom. The selected zines were also diverse in art styles: some were hand-drawn, others had geometric designs, and a few were printed in black and white. They showcased the creativity and thoughtfulness in the people who are concerned about the implications of today’s fast-paced information era and zines provided a low barrier way to raise awareness.

Zine Inventory Spreadsheet

As the outreach assistant, I was assigned to keep track of the zine rack on a weekly basis and inform Cynthia when specific zines were low in stock. Week by week, I found joy in walking up to the quiet study space that RDDSx transforms into when there are no events scheduled. Like a librarian restocking the books that get returned, I was excited to find the zine stock depleting because that meant the rack was being seen by passersby and incited curiosity. As a marketing student, I’m particularly drawn to consumer behavior so this weekly duty became an observational experiment on zine trends and what those trends implied about community interests.  
 

The spreadsheet was simple: separated by rows of zines that had its own code number and columns of the inventory count of each week and the difference from the week prior. Whenever a zine inventory fell to one, I would highlight the box red and notify Cynthia so she can print out more and I can fold new ones to restock supply. As an aggregate understanding of rack performance, I summed up the total differences in each zine and per week basis. This helped point out specific zines and weeks that had high activity. Perhaps not the prettiest spreadsheet but it was efficient and clean.

In numbers, the rack wasn’t overly popular but it had some weeks where activity peaked. Over all, 31 zines were taken from the rack – roughly five per week. The two weeks with high activity were the first week when the rack was available publicly and the first half of April. Popular titles were IntersectionalAI Toolkit: What Shouldn't AI Be Used for? and So You Want to Be a Wizard, closely followed by Tarot & Tech: Divesting From Giants and a zine by Penn Libraries' Dot Porter about the Manuscript Studies Interest Group. Some titles that were untouched were Building Consentful Tech and Data for Gender Equality.

The early-semester spike reflects the zine rack’s novelty for both people who are interested or unfamiliar with zines. A possible reason for April’s uptick could coincide with more foot traffic in the area so more people stopping by and taking a zine along the way. An interesting question to explore would be: does foot traffic in RDDSx correlated with overall library traffic and even more generally, correlated with the academic calendar? Understanding the pattern of foot traffic can boost marketing tactics such as a table tent to explore more about zines or a “staff-pick” zine highlight. 

In terms of popularity, titles that add “toolkit,” “wizard,” or “tarot” display a twist of fun while strictly informative titles about policy building and data may deter readers. Perhaps, because RDDSx is located in the heart of the library where students are there to study and complete assignments, the zine rack may offer a break for them to read something fun to stimulate brain activity. This is valuable information for curating future zine offerings in order to maintain rack activity. 

Upcoming Call for Submissions

To continue growing this initiative, we will soon invite new zine contributions from students, staff, and faculty at Penn! Please keep in mind the focus of RDDS is related to tech and data, so our zines are following those areas of studies. If you’re interested in submitting or recommending a zine please reach out to libraryrdds@pobox.upenn.edu and keep an eye out in the RDDS newsletter for more details.