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.”*
*The good news is author contact info and fanzine digitization is currently available. What is needed is someone to organize and recruit volunteers to convert and assist authors, plus outreach. The play is written and the theatre is waiting, someone just needs gather the actors and step onto the stage.
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I’ve had several readers express interest in helping get printed fanzines online. If preserving this history is something you care about, friends, do me a favor and reblog and / or volunteer!
I think I remember @aiffe and @real-life-sucks-ass asking me about helping. If there were others I apologize I’m not remembering right now, but I hope you see this anyway!
The Organization for Tranformative Works (which runs AO3) has the Fan Culture Preservation Project, as part of Open Doors, which is dedicated to sheltering at-risk fandom contact.
The Foresmutters Project was a test case for Open Doors, collecting very early Kirk/Spock material and preserving it. Once it was successful, Open Doors became fully operational.
If you’re interested in preserving fanzines and fan culture, you need to ask the OTW about volunteering with the Fan Culture Preservation Project. They already have a project going, but they can always use more people to help.
Open Doors does not assist fan authors with moving their print fanfiction online. They do assist with preserving print fanzines at universities and they will move at risk already online archives to AO3. But that’s all they are currently set up to do,
So if you want to preserve fanfic AND make it accessible to fans (not just stored inside paper fanzines in a warehouse museum Indiana Jones style), then this informal project is the way to go. This is not an OTW project…think of it more as peer-to-peer fan help, like we’ve done for generations.
