But it's a good 'un.

The Organization for Transformative Works (read "fanfic") has started working with the University of Iowa to get fanfic 'zines into a cataloged archive.

Two days ago they announced the first collection has been received in their blog and their LiveJournal community.

Surprisingly enough, their blog comments exploded into draaaahma and the LJ comments were "Oooh, cool, here are some things that need to make it into the collection, what can I do to help?"

The funny thing?

Mariellen (Ming) Wathne's "lending library" collection is what all the stink is about. For the most part, 'zines that were either originally sent to Lucasfilm to satisfy their copyright management desires or sent to Ming for the express purpose of being part of a lending archive.

It's estimated to be about 3,000 items. A few dozen boxes.

That's a drop in the bucket, not only among the total number of fanzines published, but among the total number of fanzines in academic collections. U of Iowa and UC Riverside each have well over 200,000 fanzines already in their collections.

Even if U of Iowa and UC Riverside have half a million 'zines, that's still a drop in the bucket. Support your community archivists, public and private.

Check out efanzines.com for the latest in structured fanwriting. Or add efanzines_com to your friends page. Or subscribe to the efanzines.com yahoogroup.

Recently up:
John Purcell's (aka profgeek) Askance #6 (PDF), with an article by yours truly about the whole Core Fandom kerfluffle, and an article by Claire Brialey on the same topic but with a slightly different perspective (I think some of the differences are rather Brit-fandom culture-specific, though).

johnnyeponymous's The Drink Tank #158, featuring another "anonymous" faaanfic submission, apparently taking both Chris and frankwu to task for being confused acolytes in thrall to Cheryl Morgan and taking Cheryl to task for, well, I'm not really sure what the author is taking Cheryl to task for. Perhaps for not giving Core Fandom the deference it desires and perpetuating the myth that gen-SF conventions and Worldcon are fun. Read it and make up your own mind.

...drift on over to profgeek's Askance #5 (PDF) at efanzines.com. Check out "The Thin Veneer: Who a Fan?" by Arnie Katz.

...and not just because I have an article in it.

It's a gorgeous fanzine, clean and spartan in its design. It may not be up to the design standards of a hai_irouchuujin 'zine, but I've seen few other 'zines that come this close, much less first 'zines that do. This issue has 4 articles about conventions and other in-person fanac.