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Lower East Side during the 1970s and continued through the early 1990s. This Collection consists of the personal papers and archives of artists, performers, writers, and organizations working in the arts – from David Wojnarowicz’s personal papers and collection of talismanic objects, to the archives of collectives like A.I.R. Gallery and Group Material, to the records of the Judson Memorial Church, among many other collections.2 When Taylor started the collection (and to a certain degree, even now), it was unique in the context of special collections, and challenged some of the fundamental principles of archival practice. Most of the donors were (and are) still living, and many had a complex and sometimes antipathetic relationship to institutional culture. The content of their collections is often radical and genre-defying. The materials, including ephemera such as flyers; artworks and objects; photo and audiovisual documentation of performances, etc., test traditional ideas about what a historical ‘‘document’’ is, or could be. The Downtown Collection foregrounds the difficulty of documenting a scene that was not always well recorded. All of these concerns are similar to the ones that complicate the ongoing creation and maintenance of the Riot Grrrl Collection. The Riot Grrrl Collection’s primary mandate is to collect the personal papers of musicians, writers, artists, and activists involved in the movement’s early years (1989–96). The papers demonstrate the donors’ creative process, as well as the development of the movement overall. Although the press and blogosphere have often misrepresented it as a ‘‘zine collection,’’ the Riot Grrrl Collection is more than that: it is largely primary-source materials, and is built on the archival and manuscript tradition. In addition to zines (and zine masters)3, Fales collects riot grrrl-related correspondence, artwork, journals and notebooks, audio and video recordings, photographs, clippings, and flyers, as well as source materials relating to the creation of these works and events (Figure 2). To ensure the long-term preservation of the materials, the collection is only available to researchers in the Fales Reading Room. Researchers do not need an institutional affiliation, and they range from scholars doing research on subjects like Utopian writers and feminist manifestos, to artists looking for visual inspiration and designers interested in how zines were constructed. Although the process of accessing the materials may seem daunting to some researchers, I strongly believe in the model of archival practice that seeks to balance access and preservation. Or, to put it another way: the archive’s rules protect the materials so they will be around to be accessed in the future. Like any archive, the Riot Grrrl Collection is an incomplete record. While many people have donated their archives and more have promised to do so, some potential donors may prefer to start community-driven projects similar to the Lesbian Herstory Archive4, or to keep their collections close to home. The things people saved (and whether they saved anything at all) were determined by factors as pragmatic as how often they moved, to more esoteric qualities like personal ‘‘archival sensibility.’’ Some activities automatically create an archive of sorts, while others leave few traces. Zine writing, for example, created documents that have become important records of what people thought, how they represented themselves, and