The Here And Now

Another example of fans not being valued by the world…or by themselves.

“The literature suggests several reasons why fan fiction is largely ignored by libraries, of which the most significant are that fan works are “not proper books” and that they cannot be easily fitted into library structures and processes. These ideas are visible in comments about fan fiction on GoodReads (https://www.goodreads.com/), a book review site:

“I thought this site was for real books. Is there any way to restrict my searches to avoid this stuff?

I thought this site was for reviews about books that I could get from the library …

These commenters might, in fact, enjoy fan fiction, but they believe that it is less appealing than commercially published works, particularly if they are not familiar with it. This lack of awareness and understanding is probably shared by many librarians, present and past, including those who created the bulk of existing library collections and collection development practices. This sets up a vicious circle: libraries don’t collect fan fiction because their patrons don’t expect it to be there because they know libraries don’t collect it.”

Later the paper quotes another fan why fanfiction does not deserve to be preserved:

“There is far too much of it and it is a waste of resources…And most fanfiction is only of interest to people who belong to that particular fandom and not the wider populace. …. “ and “ I don’t think it should be necessarily and actively collected at the level of public library due to its nature; quite impromptu,ephemeral, amateurish and numerous"

Thankfully in the UK, one fanzine publisher (ScotsPress) provided a single copy of each fanzine she published in the 1970s and 1980s to the British Library. This was done as part of the UK’s legal deposit requirement (works published in the UK are to be submitted to the British library.)

The publisher later donated not only her private zine collection to University of Iowa Fanzine Archive, but she also sent scans of over 500 fanzines to Texas A&M University to form the core of their digital fanzine collection (The Sandy Hereld Fanzine Collection)

So a huge thank you to every fan and librarian out there who thinks fans and their fanworks are worth preserving. Women have, for far too long, been told that we and our creations are not valued. And sometimes, it is a story we tell to ourselves. Or impose onto each other.