• A post on the New York Times' Learning Network discussed students confronting 'what ifs' in classwork. "In this lesson, students will discuss how they 'read' their favorite television shows in order to make predictions about what will happen, then apply these skills to speculate about what happens to literary characters after their favorite novels or plays end. Finally, they will use the inferences they gain through close reading to create imagined futures for these characters in comic strips, next chapters, letters, journals or videos."
• Fandom scholar Henry Jenkins' hosted an exploration of comics fandom in Poland on his blog. "In the 'Participatory Poland' report a group of Polish aca-fen makes a preliminary attempt towards defining the specificity of an Eastern European country’s participatory culture shaped both in the communist and post-communist periods. By placing the development of selected fan-based activities against a broader socio-historical background, we are trying to capture the interplay between the global and the local context of participatory culture, as well as take preliminary steps towards making its Polish branch available for academic research."
• Pinboard creator Maciej Cegłowski gave a presentation titled "Fan is a Tool-Using Animal" on fandom communities online and their use of bookmarks. He discussed his interest in having fans come to his site after observing their intriguing use of Del.icio.us, but due to their attachment to the site he had no luck until the site changed enough to drive fans away. He also spoke about the importance of fandom culture and its endurance over time. "Part of the reason our television sucks less than it used to is because people are more sophisticated about the way they watch them...fandom analyzes this stuff to death and deconstructs it...and this percolates back into the culture." (Audio only)
• The University of Iowa, which houses Open Doors' Fan Culture Preservation Project, released a video about the Doctor Who fanzines in their Special Collections & Archives to celebrate the show's 50th anniversary. Although there is no transcript available, the post description includes a mini guide to the collection.

What academic explorations of fandom have you come across? Write about them on Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

In this post:

• A bit of background explanation
• What this means for creators who have work on Stargatefan
• And what to do if you still have questions

Background explanation

Open Doors is pleased to welcome StargateFan, a gen Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis archive, to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

In its new home, StargateFan will be a separate, searchable collection with its own identity for all of the fan fiction, fan art, and fan comics housed on the current archive. We will begin manually importing works from StargateFan to the AO3 collection in December 2013.

What does this mean for creators who have work on StargateFan?

This is the part where we ask for your help!

1. If you already have an AO3 account and have posted your StargateFan works there, please contact Open Doors with your StargateFan pseud(s) and e-mail address(es), so that we won’t import your works. (We can also e-mail you instructions for mass-adding works to the new collection here on the AO3.)

2. If you don’t already have an AO3 account but would like one to import your works yourself, please contact Open Doors with your StargateFan pseud(s), and the preferred e-mail address to send the AO3 invite to. (We can e-mail further instructions for importing stories and adding them to the new collection here on the AO3.)

3. If you would NOT like your works moved, please contact Open Doors with your StargateFan pseud(s) and e-mail address(es) so that we will not add them. (If you would not mind them being preserved but do not want your name attached to them any longer, please let us know that too—we can orphan your works instead of leaving them behind to be deleted.)

All works imported on a creator’s behalf will be attributed with their name in the summary of the work. As we import works, we will e-mail notifications to the address associated with the work.

All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 3 months, unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.

If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your StargateFan account, please contact Open Doors and we'll help you out. (If you've posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they're yours, that's fantastic; if not, we will work with the StargateFan mod to confirm your claims.)

If you still have questions...

If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ page, contact the Open Doors committee, or leave a comment on this post and we'll respond as soon as we can.

We're also planning to hold two public chats on Campfire (the online chat platform the OTW uses): *November 13, from 02:00UTC to 0:500UTC*, and *November 23, from 20:00UTC to 23:00UTC* (click the links to see when the chats are held in your timezone). You can access OTW's public discussion chatroom using this link.

Anyone with questions about the process is welcome to join the Open Doors team at those chats, and we’ll do our best to answer you. We'd also love it if fans could stop by to reminisce and help us preserve the story of StargateFan and on Fanlore--no wiki editing skills needed! Of course, if you would like to edit on your own, your contributions would be very welcome. <3 (New to wiki editing? No worries, just visit this page.)

We're excited to be able to help preserve StargateFan!

- The Open Doors team

Click for English language version

In diesem Eintrag:

• Eine kleine Hintergrunderklärung
• Was das für die Urheber von Fanwerken im GSSU bedeutet
• Und was tun, wenn du noch Fragen hast

Hintergrunderklärung

Bettina, die GSSU (German Speaking Slashers United)-Archivarin, erstellte das Archiv im Jahr 2000 als Zusatz zur deutschsprachigen Querstrich-Mailingliste. Obwohl die Mailingliste immer noch existiert, wanderten viele Mitglieder in andere Bereiche wie LiveJournal/Dreamwidth, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. ab. Aufgrund dessen und wegen der niedrigen Postingaktivität in den letzten Jahren, kündigte Bettina in 2012 an, das Archiv zu schließen. Da dies für sie eine schwierige Entscheidung war und sie einen wichtigen Teil der deutschsprachigen Fandomgeschichte erhalten wollte, stimmte Open Doors bereitwillig zu, die Fanwerke des GSSU im Archive of Our Own zu erhalten.

Im neuen Zuhause erhält das GSSU eine separate, durchsuchbare Sammlung mit einer eigenen Identität für alle Fangeschichten aus dem Originalarchiv. Mit dem Import des GSSU in diese AO3-Sammlung beginnen wir im November 2013.

Was bedeutet das für Urheber, die Fanwerke im GSSU haben?

Das ist der Punkt wo wir eure Hilfe brauchen!

1. Wenn du schon ein AO3-Nutzerkonto hast und bereits deine GSSU-Fanwerke selbst hochgeladen hast (oder dies gerne selbst machen würdest!), bitte kontaktiere Open Doors oder die Archivarin unter gssuarchivist at gmail.com mit deinem GSSU-Pseudonym(en) und E-Mail-Adresse(n), damit wir deine Geschichten nicht importieren. (Wir können dir auch eine Anleitung schicken, wie man eine grosse Anzahl Geschichten gleichzeitig zur neuen AO3-Sammlung hinzufügt: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/GSSU.)

2. Wenn du kein AO3-Nutzerkonto hast, aber gerne eines möchtest, um deine Geschichten selber zu importieren, bitte kontaktiere Open Doors oder die Archivarin unter gssuarchivist at gmail.com mit deinem GSSU Pseudonym(en) und deiner bevorzugten E-Mail-Adresse, damit wir dir eine AO3-Einladung schicken können. (Wir können dir eine Anleitung schicken, wie du deine Geschichten importieren und sie zur neuen AO3-Sammlung hinzufügen kannst: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/GSSU.)

3. Wenn du deine Geschichten NICHT importiert haben möchtest, bitte kontaktiere Open Doors oder die Archivarin unter gssuarchivist at gmail.com mit deinem GSSU-Pseudonym(en) und deiner E-Mail-Adresse(n), damit wir deine Geschichten nicht importieren. (Wenn du nichts dagegen hast, dass deine Geschichten dem Archiv erhalten bleiben, aber du sie nicht mit deinem Namen assoziiert haben möchtest, dann lass uns das auch wissen. Anstelle deine Geschichten zurück zu lassen, wo sie gelöscht werden, können wir sie anonymisieren.)

Alle Fanwerke, die im Auftrag der Urheber importiert wurden, werden in der Inhaltsangabe der Geschichte mit dem Autorennamen versehen. Im Zuge des Imports werden wir E-Mail-Mitteilungen an die Adresse, die mit der Geschichte assoziiert ist, verschicken.

Alle importierten Geschichten werden anfangs nur für eingeloggte AO3-Nutzer sichtbar sein. (Nachdem du deine Geschichten mit deinem eigenen AO3-Nutzer verbunden hast, kannst du sie für alle sichtbar machen, wenn du möchtest.) Nach 3 Monaten werden die von niemanden beanspruchten, importierten Geschichten für alle Besucher sichtbar gemacht.

Wenn du keinen Zugang zu dem E-Mail-Account mehr hast, der mit deinen Geschichten im GSSU-Archiv assoziiert ist, bitte kontaktiere Open Doors und wir werden dir aushelfen. (Wenn du deine Geschichten woanders gepostet hast oder sonst beweisen kannst, dass es deine Geschichten sind, dann ist das toll. Wenn nicht, dann werden wir mit der GSSU-Archivarin zusammenarbeiten um deinen Anspruch zu bestätigen.

Wenn du noch weitere Fragen hast…

Wenn du noch weitere Fragen hast, besuche die Open Doors FAQ Seite, kontaktiere das Open Doors Komitee oder hinterlasse hier einen Kommentar, und wir werden so schnell wie möglich antworten.

Wir planen auch zwei öffentliche Chats auf Campfire (der vom OTW benutzten Online Chat Plattform): 19 October 2013 10:00:00 UTC und 26 October 2013 16:00:00 UTC((klick den Link um zu sehen, wann die Chats in deiner Zeitzone stattfinden). Du kannst auf den öffentlichen Diskussions-Chatraum der OTW unter diesem Link zugreifen.

Jeder, der Fragen zu dem Prozess hat, ist eingeladen, an den Chats mit dem Open Doors-Team teilzunehmen, und wir werden unser Bestes tun, um eure Fragen zu beantworten. Wir würden uns auch freuen, wenn Fans daran teilnehmen würden, um in Erinnerungen zu schwelgen und so die Geschichte des GSSU und die Geschichte des deutschsprachigen Fandoms auf Fanlore zu bewahren—man benötigt dafür keine Wiki-Editierkenntnisse! Natürlich, wenn du das Fanlore-Wiki gerne selbständig editieren möchtest, sind deine Beiträge sehr willkommen. <3 (Ist das Editieren eines Wiki neu für dich? Kein Problem, besuche einfach diese Seite.)

Wir freuen uns, bei der Erhaltung eines Teils der Geschichte des deutschsprachigen Fandoms zu helfen, und sind Stolz, das German Speaking Slashers United-Archiv im AO3 willkommen zu heißen!

- Das Open Doors-Team

Sometimes fanworks vanish from the Web when they weren't intended to. Hosting services shut down; software becomes obsolete; archivists pass away or simply find that they no longer have the time or money to keep up their sites. Any of these occurrences can result in the loss of thousands of fanworks. The OTW's Open Doors project is a resource to help fans prevent such losses.

Open Doors works with fannish archivists to import fanworks from endangered archives into the Archive of Our Own. Approximately 11,600 works have been imported to date. Some archives can be imported automatically, but in most cases the Open Doors staff assist archive mods to manually import their archives into the the AO3. Manual importing involves creating an AO3 collection for the archive, contacting as many fanwork creators as possible, and then importing the works and editing them to indicate their original creators. These archives can be large or small — we’ve worked with designated archivists to import small collections of works of deceased fans, and we've worked with archives containing over 5,000 works. The process of manual importing can be time-consuming, but we think it’s worth it!

Open Doors has completed imports for three archives so far. The Foresmutters Project, an archive of early Star Trek slash that is also mirrored on OTW servers, has been migrated to a forever home on the AO3 where it is more accessible. The Smallville Slash Archive and 852 Prospect, an archive for The Sentinel fanfiction, have been imported as well. We also imported Kista and Demeter, two early Star Trek novels, which were first hosted on OTW servers as scanned PDFs. This involved using optical character recognition to turn the PDFs into editable text and then, in the case of Demeter, painstakingly comparing the results to a print copy of the original 304-page zine to correct any errors in the electronic copy.

Imports currently in progress include The Good Omens Library; GSSU - German Speaking Slashers United; the Dannell Lites Collection, a memorial archive consisting chiefly of DC and Marvel comics fanfiction; the Leah Adezio Archive, a memorial archive consisting chiefly of DC Comics fanfiction and fanart, and original comics; and Stargatefan, an archive of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis gen fanfiction and fanart.

We also have several archives stored as backups in case of failing hardware, software, and/or hosting issues, and are working with the mods to manually import them or to keep them safe until automated import code is available.

To inquire about preserving an archive, please contact the Open Doors committee. And to support our ongoing preservation efforts, please donate to the OTW today! Your support will help to ensure that the fanworks you love will be around for future generations of fans to enjoy.