Earlier this year, David W. Mullins Library on the campus of the University of Arkansas reopened its doors to show off a renovation that was years in the making. Joshua Youngblood is the associate dean of Special Collections for Mullins Library. He says it took students less than a day to make the new space their own.
“To the point where we were finding students in spaces they weren’t supposed to be — or I would say that we didn’t expect them to be. And so they immediately figured out how to use this library because they love the library and they want to use the library.”
The Division of Special Collections at the University of Arkansas Library is a catalog of items that only exist in this library system, ranging from out-of-print books by Arkansans to pamphlets and zines that are relics of pop culture from decades past.
For Youngblood and his team in Special Collections, the updates to the building have given them much more visibility — and light shining on their work. And that’s not metaphorical.
“I was in Special Collections back before when it was really hard to find, and my job then was to do outreach for Special Collections that was almost impossible to find, and to try to get students out to do instruction down there. So it was a tough gig — down in the basement.
“Now there’s not a basement. There’s a first floor that has a south entrance. We have lots of glass. We have sunlight, which is amazing. I never saw the sun for, oh, I don’t know, 12 years or something. And so to see the sunlight — but also the visibility — and the visibility is very much part of the plan. It’s something we wanted to do. So you can see into the reading room and see the activity of people using our historical records and our rare books for research. You can see into our classroom, where we’re holding 15 classes a week at some points now. You can see that work that students are doing. You can come in through the café, come into the first floor, you can see all of our exhibits, see the hub of activity.”
That café is on the south side of the library, with a small patio and a door to lead students into the building. The visibility of the work done by Special Collections is on display on the first floor, beginning here.
“Get your delicious Onyx coffee, and then you can also look at our case, which on the north wall of the café, is a case going directly into Special Collections. This is a rotating exhibit curated by Katherine Wallach to support the World War II exhibit we had earlier. This one focuses on Japanese American incarceration. We have a substantial archive here and partnerships on campus and around the state to commemorate and help researchers study Japanese American concentration camps here.
“This actually comes from the Ferris Archives — it’s archives in our collection about Japanese American incarceration. So while you’re sitting here having your coffee, you’re also in Special Collections.”
As you leave the café to walk farther into the library, you’ll see more space available for displays and pop-up exhibits. Once you exit the hallway, a gallery room is filled with an exhibit by artist Jay Youngdahl. A half dozen college-aged guys in white shirts and ties gather around a penny press.
“What are we working on here, fellas?”
“We’re pressing pennies. Little souvenirs.”
“This is insane. Have you ever seen this?”
“I haven’t seen it here. I’ve seen it at, like, Silver Dollar City. They have them in places like that. But apparently Arkansas — we gotta remember this.”
“Yeah.”
“What are your thoughts?”
“It’s cool. I mean, this is the furthest I’ve been. It kind of reminds me of a museum.”
“Yeah.”
“Like this area? Like museums.”
“I don’t even know what that is. It’s a big knob. Explain to me what we got here.”
“I don’t know.”
“If you don’t know, this is a person — is that — this is William Henry Gray.”
“Okay.”
“Souvenir coin. This is a pretty good one, actually.”
“And then we got — this one’s the best. That one’s a really good one. That one is cool.”
Youngblood says as soon as that machine was installed, students flocked to it.
“It got broken at one point, and we got it repaired already, just because of how much use it’s getting. And the students have been going in the gallery to look around and sit on the bench — but also definitely using that penny press. They love it.”
“If you want to talk about ownership of the space, that bench was not there. It has been moved over to sit in the gallery.”
That is Sara Barclay. She’s the exhibits and engagement archivist for the library. She says when she has curated exhibits in the past, she tries to create a path or a flow for patrons to view the works.
“So that it seems clear on where you’re supposed to be going in the exhibit, so that if there is a story that we’re trying to tell — which there usually is — you’re not getting in halfway or at the end. That being said, students will do whatever they want to do.
“So you do, I think, have to take that into account and make it available for them to sort of peruse and just pop in a little bit. I think it’s important to give them enough freedom to do what they want while still getting the message or the story across that you’re trying to.”
The exhibitions don’t just include staff-curated projects. Youngblood says they also highlight student-led exhibits, too.
“And this one is dedicated to the Marinoni family — Antonio and Rosa Marinoni — and their connection to the university and the city. Again, the students made the selection. Sara helped them install it. Our preservation team helped install it as well.
It’s really amazing to see this space here. And you could imagine we could actually have more stuff on the walls through here, too.”
Barclay says one of their most popular exhibits on display right now was inspired by a grad student.
“Becca Olson, who is a GA here in the library, was working on a sort of study break around midterms where she wanted the students to have an opportunity to make zines and learn about zines. She was going to do a zine workshop, and she and I were meeting to talk about some general outreach for the library that we work on together.
“I thought it would be a really cool opportunity to do a little mini pop-up exhibit on our really wonderful zine collection that we have in Special Collections. And then work caught up with me, and I just got a little busier than I was anticipating. So I pulled in Joshua and Aileen to see if they’d be willing to help with selection and with the layout of the exhibit, and they did a fantastic job of it.”
Library experts tend to agree on a few parameters around what makes a zine a zine. They’re self-published, self-created, and self-distributed publications. Beyond that, the definition can be pretty wide open.
Youngblood describes them further as a form of ephemeral personal expression.
“It’s not a magazine. It’s not a professional journal or a scholarly journal. It’s a self-published thing, but it can be made from a scrap of paper. It can be made from other objects. It’s really an expression of artistic or intellectual intent in some way — ‘I want to put this in physical form.’
“The fact that a zine would come into a university academic library’s collection — that didn’t used to happen. And not every zine creator wants their zines collected.”
Barclay says her experience with zines has been through grassroots movements.
“It was just a cheap, effective way they could self-publish information about their movement. So to me, it makes perfect sense for them to end up here. Even though the creators maybe didn’t mean for them to have this lasting impact, they are an important part of history that I think deserve to be collected.”
Aileen Polansky is the folk arts and engagement specialist within the Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts department of the library. She says her experience with the medium began through one of the most ephemeral and zeitgeist cultures — fandom and fan fiction.
“Talk about ephemeral, right? Pop culture moves so fast. You make it and they’ll do it for charity or for fun or whatever it is, but it’s so in the moment. It’s because the show is big, a book is big. I don’t think anyone’s making that with the intention of it lasting or ending up in here. Like you said, it feels very of the moment even when you’re engaging in it.”
“Can we see them?”
“Yeah. So they’re here. And one of the reasons they are behind the glass of the reading room is because we do want students to work with them, but they are permanently part of the collection. So you see them — hopefully you’re inspired. You walk right in the door. And we’ve had this happen a lot already, where some people see it. They read the instruction manual on how to make a zine.
“There’s a QR code, which Sara and Aileen created, so that you can go and look at the zine collection AR Arc Zen — that’s the location code in the library’s catalog. You can see all of them, or you can just walk right in and pick them up and use them.
“From the outside looking in, you see the really old one I mentioned from 1933, one of the more recent ones, some of the student-led ones, and some really fun ones too. For instance, ‘The Art of Calling the Hogs.’ So if you happen to be on campus and you haven’t yet learned how to call the hogs, you can walk into Special Collections and pick that up.
“And we should probably do that. Yeah. Yeah. And sure enough, there is a zine for that. Let’s begin. Slowly raise your arms above your head as you yell ‘Woo!’ and shake your fingers for a few seconds, and it walks you through the entire process. That’s so fun. And then say ‘Razorbacks’ at the end and then repeat.
“You see, it’s also quite a beautiful zine, actually. It’s a small-format zine, but it’s really engaging design — it has this vintage, aged look through the photographs. It’s a really, really great zine.
“How old is this?”
“Last year, right? I think this is spring semester of 2025. That’s one of the student ones.”
“Oh, wow. Okay, so it kind of almost intentionally looks aged.”
‘Yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot of the student ones — we have every class that’s producing zines that wants to donate to us. That means we’re getting new zine examples all the time, which means it’s updating the zine collection.
“On the very front, there’s an example from a class two years ago — one that I remember, Spilled Milk in particular — which just talks about the meaning of spilled milk. It’s great. This is from a couple of years ago, and that’s just one piece of paper. It’s just one piece of paper. As the instructor, a zine can start with just one piece of paper that you fold and then you put stamps on.’”
The zine exhibition is on display in the Special Collections Reading Room, Room 134 in Mullins Library, through Oct. 17.
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