What we are doing:

Over the years, I have talked with a number of people about a FanHistory Archive Project. This project is to establish physical and electronic archives primarily about SF Fandom. The project is described below.

The Florida Association for Nucleation And Conventions, Inc. (F.A.N.A.C. Inc.), the sponsor of MagiCon, funds this project.

Joe Siclari, FanHistory Project Chairman, F.A.N.A.C., Inc. ,
Editorial Coordinator
jsiclari@fanac.org

FanHistory Archive Project

Description

Compile a historical archive of fanzines, convention publications, photos and other materials to preserve them for their historic and literary interest. Access to this archive to be available for research, exhibits, and educational purposes.

Reasoning

SF and SF Fandom have generated a tremendous amount of interest and activities over the past century. Many professionals in the literature and the arts SF fandom. (Ray Bradbury, J. Xavier Kennedy, Ray Harryhausen, Roger Ebert, Harlan Ellison, and Robert A. Heinlein - to name but a few.) In addition, even more quality material was produced by fans for their own purposes. This includes fiction and non-fiction, artwork, humor, etc. The material was limited only by a fan's imagination -- and fan's have a most extra-ordinary imagination!

Most of the materials produced are rare, and had a very small distribution. Quite a bit of the material produced was of a high caliber. These items should be preserved for their own intrinsic value, interest and entertainment, and also for their historic study -- cultural and literary.

Purpose

a) Obtain and preserve the physical, and often ephemeral and fragile paper, recorded and other physical materials that represent the history of science fiction and especially science fiction fandom.

b) Preserve the content of these items in a more permanent and accessible form so that the materials may be transferred and accessed by a wide variety of methods, electronically and in print.

Goals

To preserve original science fiction and fannish materials
To make copies of related written and visual images
To record and preserve existing related recordings
To be able to make copies of these available to others
To encourage others to preserve such materials and coordinate with them
To obtain inventories of these other archives (and possibly copies of the materials)
To publicize this project to get materials and assistance.

Preservation Methodology

a) To collect such materials and arrange for accessible archive(s) of original or copied materials
b) Original materials to be stored flat or in files in dark, air-conditioned areas.
c) Valuable paper items would be kept in non-acidic folders or sleeves for better preservations, especially older and more fragile items.
d) Selected individual items would be scanned and stored electronically as graphic files. (Those with desirable written materials might be OCR scanned to make those files more easily accessible.)
e) To photocopy materials, as necessary, for distribution

Types of materials to preserve

Fanzines
Photos
Ephemera
Awards, trophies, and plaques
Audio recordings (non-commercial)
Films & video recordings (non-commercial)
Magazines & books (no longer commercial)
Art
Other materials as determined later

FanHistory Project - expanded description

Compile a historic archive of fanzines, photos, convention publications, and other memorabilia to preserve it and for use for exhibits, research, and possible reproduction for convention and historical publications.
Preserve the physical ephemeral and fragile paper materials. Identify individuals and organizations who will keep these in a dark, air-conditioned area, but also allow access for research.
Preserve the content of the above items by scanning the materials and saving them electronically via optical and/or CD-ROM (or equivalent technology, like DVD). Save them in a standard format that can be widely used on a variety of computer platforms (GIF or TIF files for example). This might also allow OCR reading at a later time.
Archive the material in a way that can be duplicated and saved in multiple locations with the potential for being used by interested parties for scholarly research and hobby and/or recreational reading.
Compile, publish and distribute information, indices and reproductions of rare, worthwhile materials for easier reference and to make the important materials accessible to a wider range of interested parties and also to reproduce photos and materials for fans, conventions, researchers, and exhibits.
Publish quality material about SF and fannish history and reprint quality material to bring it to the attention of a modern audience.
Coordinate with several major fannish organizations and also with several academic institutions to have material archived for permanent accessibility by interested fans and researchers.
Use the materials preserved to develop and assist others in the development of historic and reference library materials.
Put on the nets via the World Wide Web or equivalent, so that information and material is available to review and to download.

Under Construction

http://fanac.org/conpubs/
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Updated February 12, 1997. If you have a comment or question about these Web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.