The Your Cruise Director collection contains material from various fandoms collected by fan and fanfic writer "Your Cruise Director" (who prefers to remain anonymous). The material includes fanzines and fan fiction. A large portion of the media is slash or het, but also contains gen.

This collection consists primarily of fanzines. Fanzines are non-professional and non-official publications produced by fans of a certain media for the pleasure of others who share the same interest. Fan fiction is the name given to literary or artistic productions created by fans about the characters, settings, and events of the media universe in which they are interested.

"Slash" refers to fanworks that feature same-sex relationships and are sometimes (though not always) sexually explicit. In slash, sexual identity, sexuality and/or romance are often the centers of the story, rather than the conventional adventures featured in more traditional fanworks. “Het” refers to fanworks that are sexual in nature, but feature opposite sex relationships. “Gen” refers to more standard storytelling with no sexual content. “Femslash” is a term that refers to same sex relationships with women. “H/C” means hurt/comfort which refers to a relationship in the story where a character is hurt or injured in some way, and is comforted by another character. The folders in this collection are marked with slash, femslash, het, h/c, or gen. If a folder is not marked, it is gen. The term “Multi-Fandom” refers to media that contains material from multiple fandoms.

Series 1, Fanzines, and Series 2, Fanfiction, have been separated based on their difference in media. Fan fiction is fiction incorporating the characters and concepts of a commercial media property, created by its admirers, typically without permission from the author or owner. In these cases, the items are individual stories separated from their original zines or that were published as standalones. Fanzines in this case are full fan magazine publications that include various forms of media, mostly fan fiction.

A large portion of media in this collection is about Star Trek. Star Trek is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. Star Trek has been a cult phenomenon for decades. Fans of the franchise are called "Trekkies" or "Trekkers". The franchise spans a wide range of spin-offs including games, figurines, novels, toys, and comics.

There are four Star Trek series contained in this collection. Their delineations are... Star Trek: The Original Series Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Star Trek: Voyager

This collection consists of several apazines to which Prentiss Riddle contributed individual zines. The APAs represented are Argos and Myriad, which take as their subject science fiction, and Lingua (later titled Linguica), which involves explorations of language and languages. The collection contains a few additional materials, including individual zines.

Fanlore.org defines an "apa" (or "amateur press association") as "a kind of fan publication in which all the materials, generally letters, would be sent to a central person, who would simply copy the entire packet in the cheapest possible way (e.g. mimeograph, spirit duplicating, xerography, offset printing; APAs far predate the photocopy machine.) Sometimes each of the contributors sends as many copies of their submission as there are subscribers to the central mailer of the zine, who then collates and mails these, and does not have to take care of the printing.

APAs were, and are, important media for fannish conversation, discussion, and interaction: sort of a fannish mailing list or LiveJournal in print sent by snail mail. "

Apa members were expected to make regular or at least periodic contributions to the mailings (called "minac", or MINimum Activity). The role of the Central Mailer, sometimes called an Official Editor or Central Editor, often rotates between members of the apa. In addition, apa participants often change the title and/or format of their apazines from time period to time period. For example, Prentiss Riddle changed the title of his contributions almost monthly between issues of the apas of which he was a member.

The Texas A&M University Zine Collection is a generalized "floating" collection of zines tied to a set of particular collecting criteria:

• Zines created by Texans, Southwesterners or other Southerners and/or concern Texas, the Southwest and the South; zines created by minorities across Texas, the Southwest or the South; zines created by TAMU students or former students; and Artzines concerned with printing and/or designed as print art objects.

The collection has "Texas A&M University" in the title to reflect the collecting criterion of zines created by A&M students or former students. More importantly, however, the inclusion of the A&M name in the collection title reinforces the collection's connection to the university as well as its major purpose, to help make TAMU a center for the preservation of regional alternative voices.