Every month in OTW Signal, we take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including issues related to legal matters, technology, academia, fannish history and preservation issues of fandom, fan culture, and transformative works.

In the News

Floppy disks, one of the mainstays in the past, are under threat of deterioration due to their composition—a thin layer of plastic coated in iron oxide that loses its magnetism as time passes, leading to data loss. While saving byte-by-byte snapshots to preserve their contents is one of the ways to safeguard floppy disk data, this is only the first step, as an article on the project ‘Future Nostalgia: Safeguarding the knowledge of floppy disks’ from the University of Cambridge explains.

The aims of this project are two-fold, first to create a resource to have one central point for safeguarding floppy disk knowledge. Secondly, to enhance this knowledge by interviewing individuals who have worked with floppy disks, and by running several experiments with conservation specialists. Knowledge from specialists, general users and even the retro gaming community will form part of the expertise project lead, Leontien Talboom (Technical Analyst), will be seeking out and recording.

While floppy disk usage has lessened due to newer storage practices, knowledge on preserving and using existing disks is at risk of being lost, especially as there is no clear best practice workflow or base guideline set for these procedures. The project aims to target this knowledge gap by setting up a workshop in collaboration with the Digital Preservation Coalition which will then be accessible on their website, as well as a public local engagement workshop where attendees may bring their own floppy disks to learn more about them. This will ensure that knowledge regarding floppy disks is preserved for future generations.

The OTW received a request from Katherine Rose, English Literature PhD candidate at Marquette University in the US. She is conducting a dissertation focusing on the works fans create and various ways (monetary and non-monetary) that they are compensated for their labor. To take part in this study, fans can answer a survey on what they get in return for the work they do on their fandom(s), composed of nine required multiple choice questions and 20 optional open-ended questions that provide more insight into the responses to the required multiple choice questions.

The study has received Ethics approval and the consent form is enclosed within the survey itself; and is being supervised by Katherine Rose and her dissertation director, Dr. Amy Blair. You must be 18 or older to participate. Inquiries regarding this study may be directed to Katherine Rose.

The survey is available here if you would like to take part.

OTW Tips

Do you have a favourite fanzine that you would like to preserve? The Open Doors committee not only rescues digital archives, but scans and transcribes fanzines, and (with permission from the creator or publisher) posts the fanworks to AO3 as part of its AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP). Meanwhile, many fanzines are well documented on Fanlore, with links to the fanworks on AO3 for when they pique your interest! Both teams aim to preserve fannish history for future generations.

The AO3 FSHP is a partnership between the Open Doors committee and fan-run preservation project Zinedom where fanfiction and fanart originally published in print fanzines are imported to the Archive of Our Own. Read more about the FSHP in the Open Doors announcement of the project.

We want your suggestions for the next OTW Signal post! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or news story you think we should know about, send us a link. We are looking for content in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in an OTW post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.