Stetson Kennedy Library

Come to the CMC and browse through our 15,000 books, journals, newspapers, and magazines by independent, non-corporate media on a wide variety of subjects. 

We also have the biggest zine collection in the southeast!

Our library is dedicated to Stetson Kennedy, who was an American author, folklorist, and human rights activist. In 2009, Stetson Kennedy donated his personal library to the CMC, and items from it have been tagged as such. 

CMC Collections Mission Statement

The Civic Media Center provides community access to information and progressive perspectives that are under-reported or distorted in mainstream media.

The CMC was founded amidst the ending of the first Gulf War with a goal to counter the uncritical reporting on modern forms of imperialism. It opened its doors in October of 1993, and the anti-war activist and political philosopher Noam Chomsky dedicated the original building. Its founding members comprised local editors and media activists of the regional independent press: the Gainesville Alternative Press (GAP), which included editors of Black community paper Mahogany Revue; environmental watchdog newsletter Friends of Alachua County Talk (FACT); countercultural monthly MOON Magazine; alternative media catalog CRISIS Press; Prairie Fire, a radical University of Florida student paper; and the Gainesville Iguana, a progressive newsmonthly (source: “The Infoshop Is Not the Revolution, But It Sure Helps to Have One Around” by J. Schmidt).

In the years following its founding, the CMC has progressed through many forms. It maintains its identity as an alternative library and infoshop, with connections to independent Gainesville press such as the Iguana, which is still in print today. The CMC also functions as a multipurpose community space. It is open to local progressive groups for community organizing, hosts live music events, and houses archival materials.

We believe that information is power, and that access to that power is inherently political and never neutral. We welcome visiting researchers of all backgrounds and experiences interested in radical political and social movements to exist as themselves in the space, and to learn how to become a part of these movements themselves. We are a volunteer-run space and we welcome folks of all education levels, genders, ages, races, and abilities to visit or get involved.

Our circulating library features books on subjects ranging from labor organizing to political repression. Our goal for our collections is to provide materials of practical value to activists which are not readily available elsewhere or which present perspectives that are suppressed in the broader information landscape. Members of our library can check out books, DVDs, and browse archived materials. Membership is based on a yearly donation of $10-100 and interested folks can ask a library staffer to sign up. We are also fortunate to have received a large donation of books from human rights activist Stetson Kennedy’s personal library in 2009, and our annex is dedicated in his honor.

As radical librarians and archivists, we have a commitment to preserve Florida’s radical movement history by operating as a community archive as well as a circulating library. Our open stacks archival collection houses decades worth of primary resources documenting political activism and radical subcultures locally, regionally and nationally: current and defunct periodicals and newspapers, zines, and audiovisual materials (DVDs, video and cassette tapes). Part of our archival collection includes the Travis Fristoe Zine Library, the largest independent zine collection in the Southeast.

Materials in both our circulating and non-circulating collections are item-level cataloged here. Our catalog is currently under construction; email collections@civicmediacenter.org or speak to a volunteer staffer at the front desk for support on how to find what you’re looking for.