Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, libraries across the world faced hard choices regarding which services to offer and how to offer them, ranging from minimal restrictions to full closures. During SAPL’s closure wherein no programs were hosted nor physical library materials loaned, staff utilized zines to invite community collaboration, document a historic moment in time, leverage staff creativity and share new and meaningful content in a digital format.

SAPL’s robust zine programs offer users a growing zine collection, the community collaborative Big Read Zine and San Anto Zine Fest, which welcomes over 90 zine vendors and 1,200 attendees annually. In 2020, SAPL zines went digital and served to document how library users coped, healed and grew during the COVID-19 pandemic. These zines showcased community submitted works and were designed, assembled and distributed by SAPL staff members.

Digital Zines enabled SAPL to create new channels of communication, build community and document perspectives that may otherwise have been excluded. Big Read Zine: QuaranZine Edition was published in May 2020 with over 20 community submissions. In August 2020, SAPL published Altar-ing — a zine containing works created at library-presented virtual writing workshops. This zine contained over 60 individual works highlighting the Latinx experience through poems, recipes, short stories and QR-code-linked playlists.