All Toronto Zine Library community members, including volunteer staff and visitors have the right to be safe, and feel safe. With this right comes the responsibility for everyone to be accountable for their actions, and to contribute to a safe and positive environment.
When visitors enter the Toronto Zine Library, please kindly follow the visitor guidelines below:
- Mask Policy: Toronto Zine Library recognizes that zinesters in Toronto appreciate our continuous support to mask. We strongly encourage all visitors to wear a mask in the library space and when participating in Toronto Zine Library events. All Toronto Zine Library volunteers wear masks, and the library provides masks as well as hand sanitizers for visitors.
- Intellectual Freedom: Access to ideas and full freedom of expression are fundamental to the zine community. Toronto Zine Library strives to include zines representing a wide variety of viewpoints to create a collection that represents the zine community in Toronto. The library will try its best to remove zines that represent hate speech and bigotry, but we cannot guarantee that the collection will be free of polarizing content. We ask that visitors exercise their discretion when browsing the material.
- Promote DIY culture: The Toronto Zine Library does not keep professionally published books that are not about zine culture or magazine collections that are held in other archives.
- TZL-run events only: Based on current capacity and the priority to promote zine-related events. Toronto Zine Library cannot collaborate with external parties to host events. Any visitors who are interested in using the Toronto Zine Library space must contact the Tranzac to inquire about renting the space: https://tranzac.org/rentals
- Disruptive Noise: The Toronto Zine Library space is intended to be a chill alternative to the lively events the Tranzac hosts downstairs. It is up to the discretion of volunteer staff to determine the noise level and will inform visitors of the noise policy. Visitors who refuse to follow the noise policy will be asked to leave.
- Neutrality in the Collection: Historically, zines have been, and continue to be often produced by members of marginalized communities. The Toronto Zine Library strives to respectfully engage with and represent those communities, which is why we reject the myth that libraries and archival collections are a source of “neutrality”.
- Monetary Donations to Tranzac: If visitors wish to support the Toronto Zine Library, we accept cash donations only. However, we highly recommend that visitors also support our house host, the Tranzac, either through monetary donations (the Tranzac can accept cash, e-transfer, cheques, and card payments) or by participating in Tranzac events. Monetary donations or participating in Tranzac events help Toronto Zine Library maintain its physical space.
- Scent-free policy: Toronto Zine Library strives to be a scent-free environment. We ask visitors to please avoid wearing fragrances or scented products when entering the library.
- Freedom to Privacy: Any zinester who wishes to remove a zine from the Toronto Zine Library catalogue must provide evidence via email that they are the original zinester of the zine in question (e.g., photo evidence, draft of zine, name they claim matches the name in the zine, etc). The Toronto Zine Library can only remove zines from certain genres (e.g., perzines, art, comics, litzine). Other zines (e.g., political zines, gender/queer) have information that is valuable to the community and therefore will not be removed from the collection unless there is evidence that the zine in question will negatively impact the creator of the zine.
- Zines containing sexually explicit materials: The Toronto Zine Library’s collection contains zines that depict sexually explicit materials. Staff volunteers reserve the right to not display zines that are deemed harmful to the Toronto community. We ask that visitors use discretion when browsing the material.