Collecting the Wretched Refuse: Lifting a Lamp to Zines, Military Newspapers, and Wisconsinalia

Newspapers/periodicals librarian James Danky does collection building wherever he goes and with whomever he communicates, it seems. Thanks to his efforts, the Madison-based Wisconsin Historical Society collects materials from categories other librarians usually overlook, including zines (homemade periodicals, produced for reasons other than to make money, usually photocopied and published irregularly), something he compares to “other print forms that served the same purposes”—radical handbills of the 1880s, poetry pamphlets of the 1950s, and underground newspapers of the 1960s. Danky also collects Wisconsin-based periodicals, no matter how small their circulation, nor how esoteric their content, from Cheese Reporter to Clothed with the Sun; prison publications; and military, embassy, and consulate publications. WHS is the only institution in the United States collecting military base publications, a genre full of racy-sounding titles like Shoot ’Em Down and Danger Forward. These magazines and papers provide unique, close-up views of soldiers’ lives, or at least a glimpse at the culture in which they work. Give me . . . the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! –Emma Lazarus In libraries wherever I go, I’m heartened and disheartened. All too often I’m aggravated when I see exclusionary library polices and unhelpful practices that go against librarians’ stated basic principles. But at the same time I’m cheered by lively and unusual collections, exhibits, books, Collecting the Wretched Refuse: Lifting a Lamp to Zines, Military Newspapers, and Wisconsinalia