Inside the stately branch of the Brooklyn Public Library that sits on the corner of Bushwick Avenue and DeKalb Avenue, a set of cardboard magazine file boxes line a shelf amid the library’s conventional lending library. Those boxes hold a collection unlike any other in the BPL system: a set of the handmade and self-published multimedia works called zines.

The zine collection, which was curated by BPL librarian Janice Dees, is dedicated to Travis Fristoe, a legendary, community-minded zinester from Gainesville, Florida, who authored a beloved fanzine entitled “America?“.

Dees established the collection at the library this past year with the goal of creating an offering that presents zines as the site of a rich tradition of personal histories, which she felt would resonate with the library’s visitors in this changing neighborhood.