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.

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!

In these tumultuous times of fans having multiple journals, websites, networks and streaming sites (with slightly different versions of their handle on each!), and with Web 2.0 companies and various hosting sites folding, failing, or cutting back on their services, we'd like to remind fans that they can use Fanlore to keep track of the fans, fan sites, fan fiction, art, vids, and other fanworks they love.

Remember: Fanlore is searchable and easily updatable, so make it easy for people to find your journals, webpages, and fanworks. You can also create pages for other people or add links to their pages, so if you just re-discovered a story or a vid you thought you'd lost, put the link into Fanlore so others can find it too!

Remember, too, that GeoCities will be closing down on October 26, 2009! (So many sites, so little time, people!) If you, or someone you can get in touch with, has a site that will be lost, please contact Open Doors ASAP.

The OTW is pleased to announce that we will be partnering with the University of Iowa to create a Fan Culture Preservation Project.

The Special Collections department at the University of Iowa already has a strong interest in zines, and is making a concerted effort to collect zines and other artifact of fan culture (con programs and flyers, for instance) in order to preserve them and make them accessible to wider popular and research audiences. Iowa is home to a huge (250,000) collection of science fiction and fantasy zines and APA zines, as well as a collection of Riot Grrrl and Underground Music Zines. Media fandom is not as well represented, and they are eager to collect many aspects of fan culture, including all types of fanfiction.

The first major donation brokered by OTW is the Fanzine Archive, a collection of over 3,000 classic zines previously housed in Santa Barbara--over 62 boxes! The OTW was able to help the retiring archivist, Ming Wathne, save and protect this valuable collection. Special Collections is currently in the process of sorting and boxing Ming’s zines. Soon after that is finished, titles in the Fanzine Archive collection will be listed in a finding aid on the Special Collections website. We are currently helping other long time fans donate their collections to the library.

OTW and Iowa are eventually hoping to explore ways to digitize some of these materials, so that fans who want to see them will have access, even if they can't get to Iowa. (We are only talking about works where we have legal clearance; both the University of Iowa and the OTW are concerned about fan privacy first and foremost.) The Special Collections department at the University of Iowa is also willing to photocopy materials for a price of about $.25 cents a page, according to their standard procedures.

Moving? Apartment getting too small? If you have zines you no longer want (or more than you can manage!) but want to know they'll find a good home, please contact the OTW. We can arrange for postage to be paid and for UPS to come to your house to pick up the boxes. You might also consider leaving your collection to the Fan Culture Preservation Project or making arrangements through a friend.

Please help us preserve this important part of fannish history!

ETA: And hey, if you're in the area, check out the Star Trek exhibition curated by our FCPP partners at the University of Iowa! Where Many Have Gone Before: Re-launching Star Trek, on display only until July 1, 2009.