Welcome to Zinedom!

Our Mission:

Starting December 2017, fans have pooled their resources and we now have access to 2,000 scanned fanzines and permission from multiple authors to assist them in converting their paper fanzines stories into something they can post online. First up are Leslie Fish and Connie Faddis, who are of some fame in the Kirk/Spock fandom.

To answer a common question, yes, we are aware of the University of Iowa and other projects to preserve fanzines. Morgan Dawn, our main organizer, is in the process of contacting authors and artists that have worked with those projects to see if they have interest in and need assistance with converting their fanfiction for online posting. For now, the two archives that we think that most of the authors will select are the K/S Archive and Archive of Our Own (AO3).  

This is not an OTW sponsored project. We’re simply doing what fans have always done: connecting fans who need help with those fans who want to help.

What You Can Do:

The bulk of this project will be copy-editing OCRs (Optical Character Recognition, a program for converting PDFs back into text) so they are as error-free as possible. This means taking a text doc and making sure there aren’t “1"s when there should be “i"s and so on. We’ll have a PDF of the original text for you to refer to as you go.

To help in this effort, we are compiling lists of author’s works and their permissions: what we have, what we need scanned, put through OCR, and edited. This will be a continuing process as more authors get in touch.

Further along, we may need people to help authors set up fanfic accounts and post to them.

Here’s our contact/volunteer survey link: https://goo.gl/forms/sKWJApJfFyRd6WH93!

We’re interested in what fanzine era authors you’d like to see post their fic online. Please let us know if you have any specific stories or authors you want to get out there, and come help us bring them to the newest chapter of fandom! Contact us via this form: https://goo.gl/forms/sKWJApJfFyRd6WH93

Cushing Memorial Library and Archives is pleased to announce that it is now able to offer free, limited online public access to select titles in the Sandy Hereld Memorial Digitized Media Fanzine Collection. Since the collection was first initiated in 2013, access to its materials was previously restricted to only those with a Texas A&M-approved ID until additional permissions could be obtained from the fanzine creators who contributed to the collection.

As the collection becomes more of an important resource for understanding the development of fandom, Cushing Library sought the approval from writers and editors of the Hereld Collection to make their contributions publicly accessible. The collection, which is an unparalleled assembly of media fanworks that document generations of fans’ continued creative engagement with media productions, consists of thousands of digitized images of media fanzines, letterzines, and club newsletters — dating from the late 1960s through materials published online or in print in 2015.

Among the creators who have given their permission are Morgan Dawn, Janet Quarton, Sheila Clark, Devra Michele Langsam, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, and M. Fae Glasgow. Cushing Library anticipates that public access will continue to grow as more authorization is granted.

A few of the impressive productions chronicled particularly well in the Hereld Collection are: Beauty and the Beast (1987-1990), Blake’s 7, Doctor Who, The Professionals, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Starsky & Hutch. Additions to the collection continue steadily, with fanzines relating to numerous other productions, such as the Harry Potter book/movie series, Due South, Miami Vice, Simon & Simon, and many others, including a bevy of stories from multiple fandoms.

Sandy Hereld, for which the collection is named after, is a living, digital tribute to a popular and prolific fan writer in the 1990s and early 2000s — who was also one of slash fandom’s most visible fans. Hereld lost her battle with cancer in 2011, but her legacy of work continues to touch lives and inspire fans. She was the founder of Virgule-L, the first Internet slash mailing list, began hosting numerous other mailing lists and fan sites, and helped create the annual “Vid Review” panel at the Escapade convention, which is the longest-running slash fan convention and became the model for serious conversations about vidding as an art form.

The Sandy Hereld Memorial Digitized Media Fanzine Collection can be accessed at: http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/149935.

Wow, Sandy would be so happy to see this. This is fantastic.

This is amazing. Sandy would be over the moon. I remember boxing so many of these things up to send off, and there are so many more items than are mentioned in this post. I am so happy her legacy continues in these collections.

The link doesn’t work for me: is some credential requested?

There’s a period at the end of the URL that shouldn’t be there!

http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/149935

I think if you view by author or browse the non-multiple creator publications they’re more likely to be open to the public and don’t require credentials or an interlibrary loan. :)