[Summary]
The first homes for electronic texts were the Etext Archives, founded
in 1992 by Paul Southworth, and the E-Zine-List, founded in 1993 by
John Labovitz, among others. The first electronic texts were mostly
political. They were followed by electronic zines also covering
cultural topics, and not targeted towards a mass audience, at least
during the first years. The Etext Archives, hosted on the website of
the University of Michigan, were "home to electronic texts of all
kinds, from the sacred to the profane, and from the political to the
personal", without judging their content. The E-Zine-List was a
directory of e-zines around the world, accessible via FTP, gopher,
email, the web and other services. The list was updated monthly. 3,045
zines were listed in November 1998. John wrote on its website: "Now the
e-zine world is different. (…) Even the term 'e-zine' has been co-opted
by the commercial world, and has come to mean nearly any type of
publication distributed electronically. Yet there is still the
original, independent fringe, who continue to publish from their heart,
or push the boundaries of what we call a 'zine'."
***
The first homes for electronic texts were the Etext Archives, founded
in 1992 by Paul Southworth, and the E-Zine-List, founded in 1993 by
John Labovitz, among others.
The first electronic texts were mostly political. They were followed by
electronic zines, that also covered cultural topics.
What exactly is a zine? John Labovitz explained on its website: "For
those of you not acquainted with the zine world, 'zine' is short for
either 'fanzine' or 'magazine', depending on your point of view. Zines
are generally produced by one person or a small group of people, done
often for fun or personal reasons, and tend to be irreverent, bizarre,
and/or esoteric. Zines are not 'mainstream' publications -- they
generally do not contain advertisements (except, sometimes,
advertisements for other zines), are not targeted towards a mass
audience, and are generally not produced to make a profit. An 'e-zine'
is a zine that is distributed partially or solely on electronic
networks like the internet."
# The Etext Archives
The Etext Archives were founded in 1992 by Paul Southworth, and hosted
on the website of the University of Michigan. They were "home to
electronic texts of all kinds, from the sacred to the profane, and from
the political to the personal", without judging their content.
There were six sections in 1998: (a) "E-zines": electronic periodicals
from the professional to the personal; (b) "Politics": political zines,
essays, and home pages of political groups; (c) "Fiction": publications
of amateur authors; (d) "Religion": mainstream and off-beat religious
texts; (e) "Poetry": an eclectic mix of mostly amateur poetry; and (f)
"Quartz": the archive formerly hosted at quartz.rutgers.edu.
As recalled on the website the same year: "The web was just a glimmer
[in 1992], gopher was the new hot technology, and FTP was still the
standard information retrieval protocol for the vast majority of users.
The origin of the project has caused numerous people to associate it
with the University of Michigan, although in fact there has never been
an official relationship and the project is supported entirely by
volunteer labor and contributions. The equipment is wholly owned by the
project maintainers. The project was started in response to the lack of
organized archiving of political documents, periodicals and discussions
disseminated via Usenet on newsgroups such as alt.activism,
misc.activism.progressive, and alt.society.anarchy. The
alt.politics.radical-left group came later and was also a substantial
source of both materials and regular contributors. Not long thereafter,
electronic zines (e-zines) began their rapid proliferation on the
internet, and it was clear that these materials suffered from the same
lack of coordinated collection and preservation, not to mention the
fact that the lines between e-zines (which at the time were mostly
related to hacking, phreaking, and internet anarchism) and political
materials on the internet were fuzzy enough that most e-zines fit the
original mission of The Etext Archives. One thing led to another, and
e-zines of all kinds -- many on various cultural topics unrelated to
politics -- invaded the archives in significant volume."
# The E-Zine-List
The E-Zine-List was founded by John Labovitz in summer 1993 as a
directory of e-zines around the world, accessible via FTP, gopher,
email, the web, and other services. The list was updated monthly.
How did the E-Zine-List begin? On the website, John explained he
originally wanted to publicize the print zine Crash by making an
electronic version of it. Looking for directories, he only found the
discussion group alt.zines and archives like The Well and The Etext
Archives. Then came the idea of an organized directory. He began with
twelve tiles listed manually in a word processor. Then he wrote his own
database.
3,045 zines were listed in November 1998. John wrote on the website:
"Now the e-zine world is different. The number of e-zines has increased
a hundredfold, crawling out of the FTP and gopher woodworks to
declaring themselves worthy of their own domain name, even asking for
financial support through advertising. Even the term 'e-zine' has been
co-opted by the commercial world, and has come to mean nearly any type
of publication distributed electronically. Yet there is still the
original, independent fringe, who continue to publish from their heart,
or push the boundaries of what we call a 'zine'."
After maintaining the list during years, John passed the torch to
others.