West of the Moon, a Lord of the Rings archive with gen and slash fan fiction, poetry, and filk, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).
In this post:
- A bit of background explanation
- What this means for creators who had work on West of the Moon
- And what to do if you still have questions
Background explanation
West of the Moon was “frozen in time” on February 18th, 2008 – almost 5 years to the day from its birth. The archive is no longer online, but its moderators and the OTW will be preserving all of these amazing works!
Open Doors will be working with Queen Mab and Shadowfax8 to import West of the Moon into a separate, searchable collection on the Archive of Our Own. Eventually the links going to the old site will re-direct to the collection on AO3 so the works can continue to be found with their old URLs.
We will begin importing works from West of the Moon to the AO3 after March.
What does this mean for creators who had work(s) on West of the Moon?
We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We’ll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will invite it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of 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 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors. We will then permanently close down the site.
Please contact Open Doors with your West of the Moon pseud(s) and email address(es), if:
- You’d like us to import your works, but you need the notification sent to a different email address than you used on the original archive
- You already have an AO3 account and have imported your works already yourself.
- You’d like to import your works yourself (including if you don’t have an AO3 account yet).
- You would NOT like your works moved to the AO3.
- You are happy for us to preserve your works on the AO3, but would like us to remove your name.
- You have any other questions we can help you with.
Please include the name of the archive in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account associated with your West of the Moon 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 great; if not, we will work with the West of the Moon mods to confirm your claims.)
Please see the Open Doors Website for instructions on
- importing your works to the AO3
- adding your works to the new collection West of the Moon
If you still have questions…
If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.
We’d also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of West of the Moon on Fanlore. If you’re new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.
We’re excited to be able to help preserve West of the Moon!
– The Open Doors team, Shadowfax8, and Queen Mab