Overview

ZineCore2 uses controlled vocabularies to ensure consistency and enable better discovery across zine collections. These vocabularies provide standardized terms for describing various aspects of zines and the ecosystem around them.

Available Vocabularies

Subjects

Topical subjects based on the Anchor Archive Zine Subject Thesaurus. Covers politics, activism, identity, community, arts, culture, and everyday life topics.

Used in: ZineCore2 subject field (required)

Genres

Form and type classifications for zines, including perzine, fanzine, art zine, comic zine, and more.

Used in: ZineCore2 genre field (required)

Rights Statements

Copyright and licensing terms including Creative Commons licenses, anti-copyright, copyleft, and standard rights declarations.

Used in: ZineCore2 rights field (required)

Agent Roles

Contributor roles such as creator, editor, illustrator, photographer, publisher, and more.

Used in: AgentCore2 roles field

Repository Kinds

Types of repositories that hold zines.

Used in: RepoCore2 kind field

Holding Access Statuses

Access levels for holdings.

Used in: HoldingCore2 access_status field

Holding Distro Statuses

Duplication and distribution permissions.

Used in: HoldingCore2 distro_status field

Agent Kinds

Types of agents in the zine ecosystem.

Used in: AgentCore2 kind field

Design Principles

The vocabularies are designed to be:

• Focused: 150-300 well-chosen terms, not exhaustive taxonomies
• Community-derived: Based on established zine library practice and cataloging resources
• Stable: Terms that enable consistent discovery across collections
• Flexible: Support for both controlled terms and free-text where appropriate

Standard Codes

Language Codes

Use ISO 639-1 or 639-2 codes (e.g., en, es, fr) for the language field.

Country Codes

Use ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes (e.g., US, CA, MX) for location information.

Accessing Vocabularies

Multiple Standard Formats

All vocabularies are published in four standard formats:

1. JSON - Simple, implementation-agnostic format
2. JSON-LD - Linked Data format with SKOS vocabulary
3. SKOS/Turtle - W3C standard for controlled vocabularies (RDF)
4. CSV - Human-readable tabular format

HTTP API with Content Negotiation

Access vocabularies via our API using HTTP Accept headers:

# JSON (default)
curl https://zinecore.org/api/vocabularies/subjects

# SKOS/Turtle
curl -H "Accept: text/turtle" https://zinecore.org/api/vocabularies/genres

# CSV
curl -H "Accept: text/csv" https://zinecore.org/api/vocabularies/rights_statements

# JSON-LD
curl -H "Accept: application/ld+json" https://zinecore.org/api/vocabularies/agent_roles

List all vocabularies:

curl https://zinecore.org/api/vocabularies

Stable URIs

Each vocabulary term has a stable, resolvable URI:

• https://zinecore.org/vocab/subjects/activism
• https://zinecore.org/vocab/genres/perzine
• https://zinecore.org/vocab/rights/cc-by

These URIs resolve via content negotiation to HTML, Turtle, or JSON-LD.

Programming Examples

JavaScript:

const subjects = await fetch('https://zinecore.org/api/vocabularies/subjects')
  .then(r => r.json());

Python:

import requests
subjects = requests.get('https://zinecore.org/api/vocabularies/subjects').json()

Available Endpoints

Implementation

Vocabularies are integrated into the specification:

• Schema validation: Integrated into JSON Schemas
• DC TAP constraints: Defined in profile TAP tables
• Multi-format publication: CSV, JSON, JSON-LD, SKOS/Turtle
• Standards compliance: SKOS (W3C), Dublin Core (DCMI)

Sources

The controlled vocabularies are derived from:

• Anchor Archive Zine Subject Thesaurus
• Barnard Zine Library cataloging practice
• UNC Factsheet Five collection
• Scholars' Lab zine metadata research