One of the things I love about zines is that they are a perfect platform to get those irritations of modern life off your chest! This also means they deal with subjects rarely documented anywhere else and give a voice to people who would otherwise remain totally unrepresented in the published record of Australian life. Two examples of this have been on my desk recently; Foxes in the supermarket and Complaint letters
Foxes in the supermarket actually contains two works by different authors published back to back on inverted pages. Written by Aaron Matthews and Beck Vinci the works are anecdotal descriptions of the frustrations and annoyances suffered by people working in Supermarkets. I was really drawn to this zine as my sister works in a supermarket and based on her stories and those in the zine it is obvious that the experience of dealing with the public, while sometimes a delight, has some universal pitfalls!
Complaint letters, written by Smells Like Zines Distro is a collection of letters of complaint and the responses generated by the letters. It demonstrates how difficult it is to get a genuine personal response or resoulution to a problem you have with a large company and how the official line for dealing with complaints when applied to all situations can result in the ridiculous.
These zines inspire me to think about writing my own zine about things that annoy me. For instance, I have long felt that it is a low act to have only 11 Tim Tams per packet. You either have to have exactly 11 people to share the packet or there will be fights! Is this a cunning ploy to get us to buy two packets?


i laughed so hard when i read your tim tams comment. to be honest i have never counted how many were in a packet before. i’m glad i have a copy of complaints letters.
‘Complaint Letters’ is a great favourite of mine. I’ve used it many times in classes.
I’m wondering if describing it as a ‘book’ in the catalogue captures the spirit and intent of zines.
Thanks for your comment Judy, and I’m sure the author of this zine would be delighted to know that you are using it in classes! For the format of “book” that you can see in our catalogue record, we are limited by the options available in the MARC format that libraries use to create these catalogue records. The only formats that are possible are: book, journal, picture, audio, music, map, manuscript, kit, microform, video, newspaper. So as you can see from this list, ‘book’ is the best choice we have for individual one-off zines, and we use ‘journal’ for zines that are regularly published as numbered issues with the same title, for example Apito. Not ideal I agree, but we try to bring out more of the character of these items by also including a genre of ‘Zines’ in our records (which you can use as a search term in the catalogue), as well as descriptive notes and subject headings to capture more of the unique flavour.
Many thanks for the reply Julie. I did notice the genre – and understand you need to work within the restrictions imposed by the system.
11 Tim Tams! You are such a librarian Cait! Hilarious!
And really… what is wrong with 2 packets of Tim Tams?
Can I suggest “Hate Mail” by Raquel and Regina
Check it out at
Flaps web profile
http://flapszine.blogspot.com/2011/08/hate-mail-3-letterpress-cover.html
Thanks for the suggestion Emma-Kate. I’m pleased to say that we do hold one issue of “Hate Mail” produced in August 2006 as part of the Flaps zine by Raquel and Regina. If you have a look at our catalogue record for Flaps and scroll down to the Holdings section at the bottom of the record you will see a list of the issues we have catalogued so far, including the first “Hate Mail”. We are still working our way through quite a large batch of zines we have acquired, so may have more issues of Flaps waiting to be added to this record.
HI
thanks Emma for mentioning Flaps here and popping in the link to our new blog.
Julie, we will get a new bunch of things sent off to you with the next two issues of Hate Mail- and put a link to this great blog.
x
Wonderful – thanks very much Raquel. I’d love to receive the next two issues of Hate Mail to add to our collection, as well as anything else you can send. Glad you’re enjoying our blog!