Open Doors

As we recently announced, the much-loved Sentinel Adult Fiction Archive, 852 Prospect, is moving in with the AO3! You can find details about the move in our announcement post; however, if you have more questions about the move, or if you're just curious about Open Doors, you can join our Open Doors team for an open house this week.

The open house will take place on May 25, 2012 at 01:00:00 UTC (see when this is in your timezone) in our Public Discussion chatroom. It will last approximately one hour. You can access the chat at: https://fanarchive.campfirenow.com/eb4b6 - just click the link to drop by. Everyone welcome!

Sentinel fans remember with nostalgia how Blair moved in with Jim. We have good news for those who know and love 852 Prospect, the Sentinel Adult Fiction Archive; it's moving in with the Archive of Our Own!

In this post:

• a bit of background explanation
• what this means for authors who have work on 852 Prospect
• and what to do if you still have questions

Fanworks come in many shapes and sizes, including fan art, fan video of all flavours, fan fic, fan craft, and more! And many fans' work is the labour of love of collecting fanworks and giving them a home. Some collections of fanworks are themed and moderated, others welcome all comers, but they're all special and represent lots of work on the part of their mods and maintainers. Zine editors, vid librarians, archive mods, and all the other wonderful people who give homes to collections of fanworks so that other fans can share in their delights, we value your endeavours!

One of the things that makes fandom special is the way that it makes a home in all sorts of diverse places. We love the diversity of fannish homes, from small town zine collections stored in a dedicated fan's bottom drawer, to vast online archives filled with a variety of different fanworks. But sometimes fannish collections need a new home — and that's where our Open Doors committee comes in.

When the code for an online archive is stuttering and dying, or a zine collection has grown too large for one fan to house, or the maintainers of a much-loved archive have moved on to a new fandom, or left fandom entirely, or left this life, Open Doors steps in (on request, of course!) to save fanworks and collections of fanworks from disappearing.

Sometimes this means opening our doors to physical fanworks. In collaboration with the University of Iowa, our Fan Culture Preservation Project preserves fannish ephemera such as zines, fannish flyers, paper memorabilia, and con programs. Among the collections we've preserved so far are the Fanzine Archives and the Morgan Dawn Fanzine and Fanvid Collection.

And sometimes it means opening our doors to digital fanworks. For online archives which need a new home, our Open Doors Special Collections Project imports at-risk archives onto the Archive of Our Own. We successfully ran our first test case for our mass importer in early 2012: we're proud to preserve the legacy of the much-loved fan Minotaur by giving the Smallville Slash Archive a new home. We also preserve digital fanworks which can't be hosted on the AO3, such as Zoetrope's multimedia work Missed the Saturday Dance.

We're joyful that we're able to preserve the work of other fans by providing new homes for the collections which have been so lovingly curated by others. One of the things which makes this work possible is the generosity of fans who donate to the OTW and thus fund administration costs, transport for zine collections, servers for the AO3, and other hosting costs. Please help us continue to preserve these fannish histories by donating today. And if you've got about 15 minutes to spare, let us know what you think of the OTW and its projects by taking our OTW Community Survey. Thank you!

The OTW is delighted to welcome the SSA – the Smallville Slash Archive – to its new home within the Archive of Our Own. The Archivists of the SSA (most recently Danceswithgary) have worked hard in conjunction with ADT and Open Doors to make the SSA the first test case for our new mass importer – and the choice is both a symbolic and a practical one.

It’s symbolic because the SSA is a venerable old archive, a relic of an earlier moment in fannish time. The SSA was founded ten years ago, four days after the pilot episode of Smallville aired. Originally founded by Livia Penn and Calista Rose, for most of its life the SSA was hosted by Minotaur, a fan beloved in many fandoms and communities.

When Minotaur died unexpectedly in 2009, a coalition of fans (including Tallihensia and Elke Tanzer — thanks y’all!) worked with his family to ensure that the SSA archivists retained limited access to the site's account on the server where the archive was hosted, but this didn't include the ability to fix broken database code or updating the site.

The limits to the access and the broken code, in addition to the questionable life expectancy of the hosting, meant the archive's survival was uncertain.They approached us shortly thereafter, and have been waiting patiently for us to build the functionality required to save this archive of more than 4700 stories. And that’s why this archive is a practical first test case for our mass importer — the import will preserve the stories if the archive should go offline, and will also give authors direct access to their stories while keeping them within the context of the SSA.

The SSA’s new home is here in the Smallville Slash Archive Collection on the AO3. Our coders have been able to set up a redirect from the original domain to the new urls, to help preserve the validity of old links, rec lists, bookmarks, etc. The redirect will only work from http://smallville.slashdom.net/ urls; sadly slashdom.com is no longer available for us to set redirects. Because the redirects will be set up to go to the version of the work imported with the SSA, if you have a duplicate on the Archive with with comments / kudos you want to keep, we suggest you keep both versions for now (if you delete the one imported with the SSA, then the redirect will break). Down the line, we’re planning to implement a way of merging two copies of the same work so you can deal with these!

The SSA Collection will be kept open for a while after import in order to allow authors who have existing versions of the imported works on the Archive to add their preferred version to the Collection. The imported stories will be set as visible to Archive users only by default; after you claim them, you can use the ‘edit works’ function to set them all to public at once (if you wish). For more information about what happens with imported works, check out Open Doors Questions and Answers. Please note: If you choose to orphan your works, you will want to check them over first and edit out any remaining identifying data.

If you have questions for the SSA mods (or you’d like to give them a bit of love for their hard work keeping the SSA alive) then you’ll find more information at the mod posts: SSA Migration to AO3 - Q&A (Livejournal) and SSA Migration to AO3 - Q&A (Dreamwidth).

We’re thrilled to be able to begin fulfilling one of our longstanding missions, preserving and protecting fanworks which are otherwise at risk of disappearance from the internet. It’s a privilege to begin with an archive which represents such a large contribution to fandom.

Mirrored from an original post on the Archive of Our Own.

Our Open Doors are now opening wide to at-risk archives! The first generation mass archive importer is now ready for testing: this importer will allow us to import archives built on the popular 'Automated Archive' software into the Archive of Our Own. Many archives were built with this software over the last 15 years and some are now slowly sinking into the sea: four years ago, one of the things that brought the initial wave of fans together to work on the OTW was the desire to save these archives from extinction. We're really excited to have finally developed the infrastructure and functionality needed to move this work forward.

Here at the OTW, we love the plurality of fandom! There are many individual fannish archives with their own unique flavour and community, and we hope this will always continue. However, fannish archives disappear for a whole host of reasons: sometimes maintainers move on to pastures new, or real life concerns mean they can no longer support the archive. Sometimes a database becomes corrupted through simple use, and the archivist doesn't have the resources (or the technical knowledge) to fix it. Sometimes the money for servers and bandwidth runs out. Sometimes copyright holders launch legal challenges which the maintainers are unable or unwilling to act against. Often it is a combination of all of these things. When archives run into difficulties, they often disappear entirely, taking with them the wonderful creative works created by the fans who use them. Our Open Doors initiative aims to preserve these pieces of fannish history by allowing archivists to import their at-risk archives into the Archive of Our Own.

Our test case for the importer will be the Smallville Slash Archive, which was hosted by fannish legend Minotaur. Minotaur sadly passed away in 2009, and his fannish executors approached us to see whether we would be able to help ensure the site he supported did not disappear with him. They've waited patiently: we're thrilled to finally be able to give them the backup they need.

Imported archives will be set up as collections on the Archive of Our Own. This means that they will have their own profile page and header (if desired by the maintainer), and all works imported will be identified as part of that collection. Collections can be browsed independently of the main Archive, and works in collections are also accessible via the main Archive. If you have work on an archive which is scheduled for import, or you are just generally interested in how this will work, check out the Open Doors FAQ.

The SSA will be imported next week, on Sunday 3rd March! Our second test case will be the Yuletide archive, one of the newest and most complex iterations of the Automated Archive code. Once we've done these two archives and figured out any bugs, we'll be looking to import more at-risk archives: if you have an archive that uses the Automated Archive software and want to transfer it to the AO3 or to back it up in the AO3, please contact Open Doors! (You can continue to moderate or run your archive, which will be set up within AO3 as its own collection. Find out more at our short guide to Open Doors imports and the Open Doors FAQ.)

Our next step will be to try to build a version of this archive importer that works with e-fiction archives, which are also database-backed. If you are a coder who is familiar with e-fiction archives and wants to collaborate on customizing our next importer, please contact Volunteers and Recruiting: please mention specifically your e-fiction experience!

The Open Doors committee is excited to announce the launch of its new website, opendoors.transformativeworks.org!

This long-awaited redesign and expansion will help us to better showcase the growing collections of fanworks that have been preserved through the Open Doors project. The site includes a Special Collections gallery of works available online, as well as a list of analog collections that have been donated via the Fan Culture Preservation Project and sites that were preserved via the 2009 GeoCities Rescue Project. The Open Doors FAQ contains background information on our projects and how you can get involved.

The new site is the product of many months of collaboration by the Open Doors, Webmasters, and Systems committees, and we're thrilled to have it up and running. Come take a look!

Fan darksnowfalling recently took a day-long field trip to visit some of the archived Kirk/Spock zines included in the Fan Culture Preservation Project (FCPP), and generously shared the experience here, on their LiveJournal.

The FCPP is a joint venture between the OTW's Open Doors project and the Special Collections department at the University of Iowa that archives and preserves fanzines and other non-digital forms of fan culture. It includes a growing number of individual collections, as well as a general OTW Collection made up of single items donated by individual fans. You can take a look at a list of holdings here, on the University of Iowa's website.

darksnowfalling's whole post is great reading, but we particularly loved the way they described the sheaf of different forms required to access the collection. One form asked for a statement of purpose:

(...) a "description of research and reason for wishing to examine the manuscripts in this department".

Here's a direct transcription of what I wrote: "I am a huge Star Trek fan; specifically, I am a fan of the idea of a romantic relationship between Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock. I'm here to read old fanzines in order to gain a better understanding of my fandom's history in the days before the Internet."

My fandom's history. That's what Open Doors and the Fan Culture Preservation Project are all about: our history, lovingly celebrated, preserved, and made available to fans near and far, now and into the future.

Photo of an archival storage box filled with fanzines.

For information about donating zines or other artifacts of fan culture to the FCPP, please contact the Open Doors committee.

Interested in more fandom history? Transformative Works and Cultures will release their special History issue in a few short days, on 15 March.

Ming Wathne, long time archivist of the Fanzine Archives, passed away on December 17, 2010 at the age of 84. Before she died, the OTW helped her transfer the entire archive - over 3,000 zines - to the Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa, where it became the founding collection of the OTW's Fan Culture Preservation Project.

Ming's husband has been receiving queries about memorial donations, and so has established a fund in support of the Fanzine Archives at Iowa. Gifts in memory of Ming Wathne may be made by sending a check made out to The University of Iowa Foundation to:

The University of Iowa Foundation
Levitt Center for University Advancement
One West Park Road
P.O. Box 4550
Iowa City IA 52244-4550

Please note on your check "In memory of Ming Wathne."

These gifts will be credited to The University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Fund, account number 30-762-054, for the growth and maintenance of her fanzine collection, and to support joint activities with the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), whose Open Doors project to preserve fanzine history assisted in bringing Ming's collection to the University of Iowa Libraries.

Open Doors is about heartbreak.

No, really. Bear with me for a minute. Remember that first 'zine you picked up at a con, the first fansite you discovered, the first archive you gained access to. The first time you thought, "Hey. This speaks to me; these people are like me."

It's an important moment: that revelation that there exists a community of fans, a culture that we create -- the revelation of what we are and what we become when we are doing what we love.

Does that 'zine still exist? That fansite? That fanwork that defied expectation and dared you to do the same, that archive that defined a moment in your fannish life, that resource you used to build a world -- are they still there? Or have they been washed away by moves and deaths and apathy, by belt-tightening and corrupted files and lack of spoons?

It's one thing if we make these decisions ourselves. It's another entirely to not have a choice, and to watch our work -- our words and art and resources, our collaborations and experiments and conversations, the proofs of our existence as communities -- be erased.

Open Doors is about creating a refuge for those works, about helping fans who want to preserve those 'zines and collections and con programs and archives and resources. Those moments of fannish epiphany. It's about keeping our hearts unbroken.

Supporting the OTW means support for Open Doors, and Open Doors, in turn, supports fandom. Donate, and keep the decisions in the hands of the fans. Help us help to preserve endangered fanworks. Help fight the battle to keep your heart safe.

This is a reminder that the OTW will give Archive beta accounts to people's whose fic will be thrown off GeoCities when it closes at the end of next month! But you have to come and ask! (Please ask!) If you haven't found other hosting options for your own fic, or if you are an archivist or maintainer of a multi-author site, please email Open Doors with your site name and we'll try to hook you up one way or the other.

Meanwhile, some awesome fans are documenting the existence of fannish sites on GeoCities using Fanlore. If you ever wanted to try your hand at using Fanlore, this is a great time to learn: there's loads of sites that need documenting. And if you know any of the people hosted on or running these sites, please please encourage them to request Archive accounts: we don't want to lose the stories!