MH-Racial Disparities/Healthcare

"Special" doesn't mean "off limits." We welcome and encourage you to see the Arts & Special Collections materials as your own, and want you to interact with these materials during your time here at Baylor both in and outside of class. Whether you have an idea for a research paper, or are simply interested in taking a closer look at a specific text, you are invited to do so. 

OneSearch

For general collections and materials in our rare collections, a great place to start your research is on our main library page with OneSearch. OneSearch is the place to discover physical items in the Baylor Libraries, as well as most of the online content that we provide for your use. It is designed primarily for keyword searching, but also provides the ability to search by title, author, or subject. If you are looking for something specific, you can use OneSearch for that too--see the Advanced Search page.

For additional information, check out our FAQs and Glossary.

BARD

While our archival finding aids can be found in OneSearch, you can locate more information on our archives by searching in the Baylor Archival Repositories Database (BARD).

Digital Collections

Some of our collections have been digitized and are located in the Baylor Digital Collections.

Our Rare Collections Research Portal highlights some of our digitized rare collections organized into easy-to-navigate topics.

Research Guides

Research guides can help you quickly locate texts in the collection that are relevant to your subject area: 

Rare Medical History Books

Book Arts

Zines, Health, and Graphic Medicine

Found something you'd like to see? 

Once you have identified an item or items that you would like to use, please use the Request a Visit form.

Zines (short for magazines) are self-published booklets by one or more contributors created with DIY techniques. They can be presented in hard-copy and digital versions, or some combination of the two.  Zines require no experience and no formal publishing model.  They are an alternate form of publishing, made not for profit, but to get ideas out into the world quickly.  Keywords: No-skill, No-Profit; DIY 

"Despite some changes in the format, presentation, and distribution of zines...zines retain their original character as hand-made and heart-felt media. They remain a mode of self-publishing that enables zine creators to express raw thoughts and feelings and their readers to feel that they are not alone in dealing with and overcoming health challenges." (Lupton, D., 2024)

Lupton, D. Health zines: Hand-made and heart-felt. "Routledge Handbook of Health and Media." pp.65-76. 2022-08-09. http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003007661-6

A few ways that people have used zines in a health context are: 

• Autobiographical representations of health-related experiences 
• Political activism in health 
• Therapy and self-care
• Health education 
• Collective zine making for community building
• Zine creation as a research method                    

In the context of racial disparities, zines can be and have been a medium that people have used to quickly get information out to their community. In this way, they are a means of countering institutional injustices. 

Zines Resources

There are numerous digital zines that you can locate. 

The Wellcome Collection, which cares for many thousands of items relating to health, medicine and human experience, including rare books, artworks, films and videos, personal archives and objects, has a growing zine collection. Lucky for us, many of these zines are available online. 

To locate a digital zine in the Wellcome Collection, head to their collection catalog and search "zine," then select "online" from the location drop-down menu. 

Baylor has zines in our Book Arts collection including: