Have you ever wanted to sit down and read 10,000 fanzines? Soon you can! The University of Iowa is digi- tizing the James L. “Rusty” Hevelin Collection, which contains over 10,000 science fiction, fantasy, and horror fanzines collected by sci-fi superfan Rusty Hevelin.
Some of these zines date back to the 1930s, which is the Dawn of Zine History. The Comet #1, published in the 30s by the Science Correspondence Club of Chicago, is considered by many to be the very first zine. In those pre-photocopier days, zines were painstakingly reproduced using mimeographs, hectographs, and carbon paper. The artwork, if there was any, was often coloured by hand. Some of the Hevelin zines are more than 70 years old and are slowly flaking their way into oblivion, so digital preservation is a must. That’s where you come in! The University of Iowa’s DIY History Project is “a citizen scholarship effort” in which preservation-minded people can help transcribe objects, like these zines, that can resist machine reading. To help transcribe Rusty Hevelin’s treasure trove from the early days of zines, please visit diyhistory.lib.uiowa.edu/hevelin. (AG Pasquella)