Come On Everybody, Let's Put On A Play! (a proposal for preservation of fanzine fanfic on AO3)

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Title:	Come On Everybody, Let's Put On A Play! (a proposal for preservation of fanzine fanfic on AO3)
Creator:	Morgan Dawn
Date(s):	December 24, 2017
Medium:	online, journal post
Fandom:	all fandoms
Topic:
External Links:	Come On Everybody, Let's Put On A Play! (a proposal for preservation of fanzine fanfic on AO3)
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Come On Everybody, Let's Put On A Play! (a proposal for preservation of fanzine fanfic on AO3) is 2017 post by Morgan Dawn.

The essay and proposals were in response to digitizing and archiving print fanzines in general, and was in specific response to the temporary removal of the print fanzine Angel in the Dark from Archive of Our Own due to what some fans percieved to be inflexibility, bureaucracy, and a confusing and seclusive TOS.

The Essay

Wouldn't It Be Nice....

We have a long and rich history of fanfic stretching over 40 years. Printed fanzines dominated for the first 25 years and have now given way to websites and online archives. However, time and age has taken its toll on these early paper fanworks and the fans who created them. There are still some fan writers who may have interest in sharing their older printed fan works but for whatever reason are unable to. The barriers to transforming paper fanfic into the online world can seem overwhelming.

Wouldn't it be nice if the OTW would offer a hand to these early fans? Even if only a few are interested, what a statement it would make about our values and our willingness to work together to not only preserve our history but to also signal to both ourselves and the world that all generations of fans and their creations are valued and worth preserving.

What if the OTW were to say something like this:

"If you are a fan with printed fanzine era fanfiction and would like to make it available online, please contact us. We can put you in touch with volunteers who may be able to scan your fic. We can also connect you up with fans willing to convert your fic into html format which you can then upload to your AO3 account. And last we have volunteers who can assist you with setting up your account and posting. We want everyone to be able to climb on board this crazy digital archive and sail with us as far as this journey can take us. We are AO3 and this is our home. We want to help make it yours too."

I realize that the OTW may not have the time or energy to organize something like this. So, in line with fandom tradition, I am tossing this happy idea out into the fandom ether in the hopes someone will say: "Hey, even if the OTW can't take on this additional workload, I can. And I will." Come on everybody, let's put on a play.

Excerpts from the Comments

[melannen]: Isn't this part of what Open Doors is supposed to do? If it isn't, it should be, and we should be working to make sure it is!

[cathexys]:

Open Doors saves the fanworks as they are, i.e., they save archives that are online by importing them to AO3 and they help with getting print zine collections saved as artifacts in libraries. What they aren't doing as of now is transfer print zines into digital form and import it into AO3. For one, there'd be a shitload of permission issues, because you're suddenly changing distribution and audiences, and I'm not sure how all the zine authors might feel about this. So it can't be a wholesale project, I'd assume, but would need to be one by one with someone checking and getting all the permissions. (On the other end, I think Morgan has linked before to the transcription site that transcribes Iowa collections, including their zine collections.)

Personally, I really want these zines accessible, and I hope we can work together to get this done!

[melannen]:

They did absorb Foresmutters, though, which was exactly that! I guess I'd hoped they were planning to carry on Foresmutters, not just archive it.

Anyway, I'm not someone who you want in charge of coordinating contacts with a lot of people, but I am totally up for "help with digitizing scans", and I bet a lot of other people would be, too.

[morgandawn]:

There are many way to approach it. The idea I tossed out above is not focusing on archiving entire zines,* but working with authors who are interested and need help converting and uploading their stories or novels. That way you only need one person's permission: the author. It is surprisingly straightforward.

And yes, as a result of the Media Fandom Oral History project we have the contact info of many fans. And don't forget there are many older fans on Facebook or mailing lists who might jump at the idea and contact you if they knew this was possible. Even a pilot project of 10 fans to start with to flesh out the issues would be better than what we don't have now.

We don't have to eat the whole pie at once. Just start with one bite.

*Although if someone wants to tackle archiving entire zines, I'd point people to the Haithi Trust project where they scan books and allow you to search for short snippets. From there they direct you to where you can find the book. Now that Open Doors has partnered with Iowa, we actually have a place to point them for fanzines. TAMU also has zines. And Haithi Trust is only one possible approach that someone could consider. I mention it to show that there are ways to work with large amounts of digitized data that do not require complex permissions.

But again, I stress, if the OTW is not up for this for whatever reason, then folks....don't let that stop you from organizing to reach out to older fans and give them a leg up. You don't need a non-profit and a board of directors to keep doing what fandom has been doing for 40 years. We are, and have always been, a community built on creativity and self-empowerment.

Edited (clarified the Haithi Trust is just an example not a proposal) Date: 2017-12-26 03:55 am (UTC)

My last thought: start something small on your own. Gather interest and momentum. Find out how many older fans are still living and need help. If it turns out that there are too many, if you need more organizational resources and manpower, then approach the OTW. The OTW is there to support fandom, not define it. They have organizational and practical limits and need to move slow. If you see someone floundering and know it will take a hour for the rescue workers to reach them, you would not wait.

The "Babes in the Woods" analogy is perfect. They needed to save their families and their homes. So they stood up and put on their own play.

[cygnaut]:

This is a wonderful idea. I was looking the other day to see if there are any crowdsourcing projects to transcribe fanzines, but the only thing I could find was one for scifi fanzines from University of Iowa.

I'd definitely like to get involved in any projects like the K/S one you linked. Maybe a centralized account on social media somewhere would help to share projects people can get involved in? I work at an archive, we've had success with simply putting a PDF that needs to be transcribed and asking volunteers to help us fill in a google doc.