Showing 4 results

This collection documents Book Are Nice and the organization's involvement in the literary culture of Miami. The collection currently includes materials from two editions of Pages & Spreads, a series of pop-up reading room events that Books Are Nice has helped organize.

The Firefly Zine collection is a collection of zines donated to the University of Miami Libraries by former residents of the Firefly, a local Miami collective house and important part of Miami's punk rock and activist subcultures. There are over 2,000 zines held in the collection.

Zines are typically independent and self published booklets popular in underground subcultures. The first zines were fanzines, started in the early 20th century by science fiction fans documenting the genre. The format truly took off with the punk rock movement of the 1970s, as a do-it-yourself spirit inspired legions of underground punk fans to start raw but vibrant journals documenting the nascent music scenes in their communities. Zine topics would broaden throughout the 1980s and 1990s to cover a variety of subject areas, from comics to anarchist politics to women’s rights, to more mundane subjects like dumpster diving, alternative fashions, tattoo art, and much more. Despite the expansion of topics, the format usually remained the same—self-published booklets printed in limited editions and typically produced with a photocopy machine.

The Firefly Zine collection in particular is significant for its materials documenting political beliefs and causes such as anarchism, direct action, women's rights, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) rights and environmentalism. There are also many zines about the punk rock music scene and subculture, the rights of indigenous peoples, and alternative forms of transportation such as bicycles. As with many zine libraries, there is also a strong collection of zines that are of a more personal nature. Zines about South Florida, Latin America and the Caribbean regions—important collection areas of University of Miami Special Collections—are also significant in number.

Jason Handelsman is a writer/journalist based in Miami. This collection consists of zines and zine originals for his project, "Untitled Rough Manuscript for the President's Reality Show," his journals, personal notes, and other writings.

The Kevin Arrow Miami, Music, Art, and Culture collection contains zines, periodicals, ephemera, flyers, photographs, art work, posters, audio-visual material (CDs, CD-ROMs, and vinyl records), and other related archival materials.