For more information about the purview of our committees, please see the committee listing on our website.
I. PUBLISHING, PRESENTATIONS and REPORTS
Journal requested, and obtained, a bibliographic listing in the Modern Language Association (MLA)’s bibliography of journals. This will provide wider visibility in academia for research published in Transformative Works and Cultures. The MLA team is currently indexing 5 years’ worth of TWC issues, which will take a few months.
In addition, TWC editors Karen and Kristina have edited The Fan Fiction Studies Reader, a reprint anthology that includes some crucial essays in the fan studies field. The corrected galleys have been sent to the University of Iowa press for an expected 2014 publication date!
Legal submitted formal comments to the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), which had requested public comments on copyright policy issues, including the legal framework for the creation of remixes. The comments incorporated many stories submitted by fans and is likely to be a rewarding read for anyone interested in fandom and fanworks.
Special thanks go to Rebecca Tushnet, Casey Fiesler and Rachael Vaughn for their work on this document. Rebecca has been asked to testify to these agencies in connection with the same public comment process and we’ll report on that when it happens. Many thanks to all of the many fans who sent in their stories. We really appreciate it.
Also in November, Legal assisted the Stanford Fair Use Project with its comments in connection with the same process, and answered a variety of legal queries from fans. They’ve also been working with a law student volunteer to create some educational materials. Legal also provided two posts on developments in copyright law during November: one regarding a proposal to create a “small claims” procedure for copyright disputes, and another regarding a major fair use ruling in the Google Books case.
Strategic Planning is currently surveying the Development & Membership and Communications Committees. They are also writing their report on Support. Reports for the Grants Workgroup and Systems Committee are under review by Board while the Survey Workgroup report is currently being prepared for public release.
Lastly, Communications staffer John Bayard made a presentation at the Mid-Atlantic American Popular Culture Meeting and several people told him how much they enjoyed using the AO3 and the work the OTW does!
II. NEW DEVELOPMENTS AND TROUBLESHOOTING
Accessibility, Design and Technology deployed Release 0.9.11 at the AO3, and are hoping to squeeze in one more code push before the end of the year. Our servers are in need of an upgrade and traffic has increased noticeably over the last few weeks (and is expected to increase even more during the holidays). As a result, we’ve been battling some performance and other issues and are working on fixes. Many thanks to Systems and Support for their work on these problems. Systems also brought up a new Virtual Machine server, which is hosting multiple virtual servers dedicated to supporting the Archive.
Additionally, AD&T has decided to apply for a humanities-related grant by February to pay for a good chunk of specific coding work, including an API. Many thanks to Scott for taking point on this.
Tag Wrangling assisted with testing some tag-related bug fixes in the last deploy, and the wrangling committee is currently working with AD&T to track some wrangling bugs. As well, due to the recent server issues, wrangling is currently limited to reduce strain on the servers, so the wrangling of some fandoms may be delayed until that’s resolved.
Abuse is seeing roughly 350-400 tickets a month come in. Their new recruits are settling in and should be starting on some of those tickets soon!
Open Doors held two public chats and provided information on the planned import for StargateFan, a gen Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis archive to the Archive of Our Own.
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. Open Doors will begin manually importing works from StargateFan to the AO3 collection in December 2013.
III. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS
Volunteers & Recruiting has been busy with final inductions for the year and reviewing the results of the OTW’s annual Still Willing to Serve Survey. This allows for current volunteers and staffers to indicate if they’d like to continue on in current positions, move to new ones, or depart the OTW. Recruitment will begin again in January after VolCom has been able to finish processing departing volunteers and taken a well deserved breather!
This is also the OTW’s final newsletter for 2013, but it will return in 2014 as committees begin work in the new year.
New Committee Staff: DandalfTheWhite (Abuse), Teddy Escher (Abuse), Elizabeth Young (Abuse), Pteriforever (Abuse), DragonWyrd316 (Abuse), Jess C. (Abuse), Kelsi No (Abuse), 2 other Abuse staffers, Sierra Wilson (Wiki), 1 other Wiki staffer
New Coder Volunteers: Storm
New Translator Volunteers: Agnieszka Górniok, Ania Kopertowska, Bianca, Dai-kun, Espirofito, Jocelin Potash, Katarina Harju, Lenore, Marinet252, monnwilk, Nana, nightmarefluff, Ruth Damaris, WenBunny, Whovie, 6 others
Departing Committee Staff: 1 Internationalization & Outreach staffer, Eva Bolinder (Translation), 3 other Translation staffers, Amy Luo (Communications), 1 other Communications staffer, 1 Journal staffer
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: 1
Departing Translator Volunteers: Eva Bolinder, 39 others.