More than 1,600 images of works in the Jewish Museum collection are now available for free high-resolution download! Visit our collection online to explore and share art in the public domain.
🔍 zoom in to examine the exquisite detail on this Ukrainian mizrah from 1877 by Israel Dov Rosenbaum. The hi-res image found on our website was inspiration for the background pattern of a portrait in the collection by contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley. As a Jewish ritual object, the papercut points east to the direction of Israel. “Mizrah” is also an acronym composed of the initial letters for the Hebrew phrase “from this side the spirit of life.” This inscription appears in the four corners of the central panel of this papercut, indicating that it functions as a mizrah.
As we sit on the cusp of changes to the Internet, after your other activities to support Internet freedom, archive your
fandom stuff.
Save the electronic files of your favorite online fandom works. Consider print-outs of your favorite online
material. And save paper
ephemera from fandom events.
Why save? Because you put the effort into a fanwork. Because you may be surprised when a fandom stays alive for years, or gets revived, or when an academic asks to cite your work. Because it’s stupidly hard to find items on Tumblr. Because, lo, in ages past, many fandom archives have risen and fallen, taking favorite fics off the ‘Net. Because it made you happy, makes you remember. Because you never know.
What can
you save?
Fanart
Stories you wrote
Epic comments on stories you wrote
Stories you love that other people wrote
Meta and meta-related discussions
Translations others did of your works
Physical items: paper ephemera, clothing, accessories, art prints and drawings.
Behind the cut…saving from Tumblr and AO3, delving into lost web sites, how to save computer files for the long term, and why I’m glad I saved physical fandom items from 10+ years ago.
So I am going to add onto this because there is, in fact, a professional archival interest in preserving fandom as well. I’ve spoken with some people about this before, but here’s the bottom line: PROFESSIONAL ARCHIVISTS WANT TO PRESERVE YOUR STUFF! HELP THEM DO THIS!
There are pre-existing fandom archives. Where are they?
The University of Iowa Special Collections. U o I is partnered with the Organization for Transformative Works (which runs AO3) to help collect and preserve fandom. They’re one of the biggests out there. Here are some of their existing collections
Pete Balestrieri, who curates the collection, is the man to talk to about this. Please consider giving him your stuff!
The Library of Congress has been archiving select webcomics, and now maintains the Web Cultures Archive which includes sites like Cosplay Paradise.
These are the big institutions doing collecting, but the archival profession and fandom need to start talking more. Born digital material is always at risk, and at present, it is mostly Western fandoms being preserved! Moreover, some facets like cosplay are currently overlooked, and that is something that needs better documentation!
Also don’t forget the Browne Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University, the oldest and largest library of its kind in the US!
And outside of the big active collaborations between between fandom and major special collections libraries, more and more university libraries and archives are offering free workshops on Personal Digital Archiving. If you’re not in school or there’s no local group offering workshops in your area, lots of archives and archival organizations now have guides online sharing strategies, tips, and sometimes even suggested freeware programs you can use to get started. While the guides are typically geared towards archiving/preserving stuff like family digital photos or research papers you wrote in school, you can easily apply the same strategies to preserving your fanworks and other fandom stuff.
Here’s a small sample of resources to get you started:
my favorite kind of fanfics are “canon divergence” because it’s always like handing back a reviewed essay with comments like “I enjoyed the strong beginning but here is where you lost me, I’ve made some notes”
Speaking as the author of several, this combination of helpful, academic, and petty is exactly my motivation.
However, this bit of nonsense single-handedly illustrates why we should never try and create an official AO3 app (aside from, you know, not even having enough personnel to build and maintain the desktop version while also dealing with server emergencies and trying to train new developers)–
–in that we would literally have to design, prototype, build, test, and refine *two* mobile apps at the same time (three if you count Windows phones) (so, two) (rimshot) and then go through an arduous app store approval process not once, but twice, and then PROVIDE TECHNICAL SUPPORT AND KEEP UP WITH OS UPDATES AND HARDWARE CHANGES FOR TWO. ENTIRELY. DIFFERENT. PLATFORMS. FOREVER.
(Also, we don’t even have an API yet, lol, that would be the first step, WE AREN’T EVEN CLOSE TO HAVING AN API, ALL DISCUSSIONS ABOUT APPS END HERE.)
Asking for “an AO3 app” is like asking for “a thing to get me places” and then being mad when you’re presented with the promise of a car, because you don’t have a driver’s license and what you really meant was a bike, except there are people who can’t ride bikes and would like to go places too, so the car is a good start at least, PLEASE STOP YELLING.
In addition, the people who now have to design and build a bike for you are also building the road at the same time. For free. In their spare time. While also holding down full-time jobs and taking care of their families. Also, people are yelling at them to go faster the whole time, and build that damn bike and that damn car already, it’s fucking 2015, HOW IS THERE NO AO3 APP YET GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER BITCHES.
(actual quotes)
If you’re now wondering if there are really that many people asking for an app to warrant this kind of post, isn’t the website perfectly usable on mobile, like, I was reading some fic on my phone earlier, it was fine, why would people clamor for an app–
hahaha haha hahahasjlkjdlksjdlksjd
sdfkdj.
so, what you are saying is that an app will be coming soon, right?
I really really really wish they were lying about the tone of some of the tickets.
I really do.
I’m not sure, though, exactly what an app’s supposed to do, though, that the site doesn’t. The seemingly most common request (after “it’ll look better”, which lolwut) is “allow me to read offline”. Last I asked a dev, the works database, not counting the tags linking which allows for filtering, is north of 100GB. Also, the mobile interface allows for downloads, so…
I dunno.
(For reference, when Renay says “hire for support”, she means “allow to volunteer”. We are not paid, which makes some of those tickets…even better.)
My personal vote @heyheyrenay is to answer all the tickets with “anyway, here is wonderall [LINK TO THE NO APP POST]. @samjohnssonvt will also not let me do this, idk why… xD
Ok here’s the thing: apps are a scam. Particularly apps that allow you to access content that you can otherwise access in a browser, that make that content “prettier” or “more user friendly” on mobile. There is no reason the organisations in question can’t just build a mobile website, that you can access through the browser of your choice, or make their main website look good and be usable on mobile browsers, just like AO3 does. Literally none.
But viewing websites in the browser of your choice allows you to do all sorts of other things. Use ad blockers for staters. Use “Do not track” and browser extensions that protect your privacy.
And companies where you are the product – Google, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Medium, Reddit, mainstream media and news outlets, most commercial websites – they have no interest in protecting your privacy, no interest in giving you the freedom to not look at ads, to view their website through a standard interface that you can choose and customise (i.e. a browser).
Their interest is in collecting as much of your data as possible. In pushing as many ads on you as possible. In using all the data leakage from your phone (is your location on?) to build more and more detailed profiles of you, to better target ads so they can make money off you.
And that’s a hell of a lot easier if they’re in control of the technical infrastructure you use to access their site (i.e. an app) than if you are by using a browser.
You don’t need an app to read fic. You’ve just been taught to want one by people who don’t have your best interests at heart.
I hate apps. They clutter up my phone and give me nothing but more ads!
Ao3 is brilliant the way it is. I can read and download fics from my phone, my tablet, my laptop, ANYWHERE. Why on earth would I need an app for this?
Thank you to all of the volunteers who work so hard on Ao3. As a programmer myself, I know how much work they do and they are not appreciated even remotely enough!
tora42's nonsensne 