Maybe that’s come as a surprise to those of you reading this as well. But, for me, it was an absolute godsend when it came to researching punk.
There are a number of libraries and archives around the country that include punk fanzines in their collection. One of the largest I was able to access was in the British Library at St Pancras in London, and the great thing about the British Library is that anyone can easily apply for membership (though not online anymore, alas...) and apply to access their archives. All you need is the money to travel to London, the time to trawl through the archives, and good organisational skills. I became a big fan of the British Library reading rooms over the years, and also of the culture around research and researchers at the library.
It’s best to arrive early, before the library and reading rooms open in the morning. Because people have evidently come down by train for the day, trekking from all over the country via Euston station, there is always a queue to be let in. Recognising this, BL have established a cafe immediately outside the library that opens before the library does, providing researchers with breakfast and coffee. Once the doors open, and everyone has been bag checked, there’s a mad rush downstairs to the lockers where everyone leaves all the prohibited items and belongings they can’t bring into the reading rooms, and bombs it back upstairs to get to their reading room of choice.
When I first used BL, I didn’t have a clue which reading room would be best to use, so I ended up being placed in Rare Books and Music, which suited me, but must have looked very odd to the people studying esoteric books and music manuscripts, occasionally looking up to see me engrossed in scruffy fanzines with titles like Mental Children, Guttersnipe and More On.
Another archive I used extensively was the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, mainly because it had an almost entire run of City Fun, the legendary Manchester punk and post punk fanzine that featured Liz Naylor and Cath Carroll amongst its alumni. Lynette at the WCML invited me to do a talk about punk fanzines at one point, which then led (directly or indirectly) to a commission to talk about punk fanzines in Manchester and Riot Grrrl in Birmingham. This was in the early years after 2010; all such funding for such activities has, obviously, long since dried up.
A fanzine that I was always sorry I never got access to was Sharon Spike’s Apathy In Ilford, which was in the Jon Savage archive at Liverpool John Moores university. I did approach the university, asking for access, but was told I couldn’t have access unless I could produce either a contract with a publisher or a letter from an academic supervisor, neither of which I had. I think access to this collection might have changed now as JISC says the collection is open for consultation, and you just need to ask them, so maybe I’ll try again at some point. Though it is possible that I might get rebuffed again.
The restrictions around access imposed by Liverpool John Moores is in strong contrast to the access rules and regulations at both BL and the WCML in Salford. BL might be formal and codified in its access arrangements, but it will let everyone in as long as they apply in the proper way and abide by the rules. By contrast, WCML is run on socialist grounds and everyone is welcome, the staff are friendly, and the atmosphere is very informal.
In a related note, it was once possible to get access to many university archives and collections both as an academic/student and, often, as a member of the public. It’s always worth checking individual library websites to see if they still offer this. Certainly pre Covid it was often possible to get visitor access as a member of the public to university libraries, just as it was possible to get access via SCONUL as an member of university staff, an academic or a student (Oxford and Cambridge excepted that is). During the Covid years everyone restricted access to their own students and staff, so there may be some hangovers from that in respect of access.
I regularly used to gain access to London Metropolitan University Library as a visitor. I could have gone through SCONUL at the time, because I was on the library staff at another UK university and had the right to full Band A membership, which would have given me borrowing rights. I chose not to do this because I was going in to look at Spare Rib, a selection of women’s glossy mags from the punk era, Shocking Pink, and some Riot Grrrl fanzines, so it didn’t seem worth it when I could get the access I needed as a member of the public. All of these items were in the Women’s Library archive, which has now transferred to the LSE library collection as a result of cuts during the financial crash and austerity. It does look like it would still be possible to get access to these collections, though I might have to explain that I’m an amateur and unaffiliated researcher and see what they say.
I am, in case you haven’t figured it out by now, a big fan of the public getting access to libraries. Whether that is for pleasure or for research, and whether it’s academic libraries and archives, or public libraries. I am a firm believer in throwing the doors open and letting everyone in. I would still have it that you have to apply for access to archives, but I’d make it easy to do so, and make the process more user friendly than it currently is.
You never know what you’re going to come across in an archive, and I think it’s really important that as many people as possible are able to access their cultural past, whether it’s punk fanzines or Chartist and Suffragette tracts and newspapers, or Shakespeare folios. Everything is important to someone.
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