Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2019: Week 12
The Fanzine Archives: A Library for the Preservation & Circulation of Fan-created Material was a collection of fanfiction zines owned and circulated by fans from the mid-1980s to 2008.
The collection's origin is a direct offshoot of George Lucas' attempts to restrict fan publishing. When Lucas stopped requesting that fans send him copies of their fanworks in 1986 (when the Official Star Wars Fan Club folded), he sent the zine collection back into the hands of a fan group.
Ming Wathne inherited the zine collection, expanded upon it, and eventually remodeled her house to make shelf space for the hundreds, then thousands of different fanzines she acquired and cataloged. Local fans helped log in new zines, but it was Ming's show for more than 20 years.
The Archives maintained an active circulating library of over 300 fanzines and a permanent collection of over 3,000 titles and became a federally recognized, non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and circulation of fanzines.