This year saw the third installment of the FanLIS symposium series (see our reports on the first and second event) – organized by CityLIS – take place on the 18th of May, once again online. All talks and the corresponding chat history are now available online. This year’s title and theme was Halliday Journals and holodecks: audiences and information in sci-fi fandoms. As Ludi Price, co-organizer of the event, explained in her opening address the theme of SF is quite central to the intersection of fan studies and library and information science for a number of reasons. First of all, SF is one of the most important genres for the development of organized fandom as we know it today. Second, the roots of fan information behaviour can also be traced to the genre and the beginnings of fanzin culture. Third, SF is an important domain for the historicizing of fandom. For example, in The Comet, the first SF fanzine, we can see how the modern fan world began to take shape. Fourth, SF works also hold up a mirror to how we conceptualize information needs: are librarians needed in the far future?, after the apocalypse?, or once information access becomes omnipresent? Will information be savoured or so interwoven with our everyday ways of operation that it will no longer be visible as a result of being taken for granted. Fifth, fans have also been at the forefront of appropriating new technologies for fan activities and information provision activities and in this way are always representatives of the near future SF that is just around the corner.
The first panel focused on different examinations of fan information behavior and its potential uses. To start the panel off Alayna Vander Veer and Austin Waters explained in their presentation “Infinite Archives, Infinite Possibilities: Learning Research and Databases with Archive of our Own” how they employed AO3 to better convey library information skills for university students. Building on the idea of incorporating student interests in learning to increase the level of connection and interest of the students to the skills and knowledge they need to master on the one hand, and the fact that many of the students are already familiar with AO3 on the other hand, Alayna Vander Veer and Austin Waters set up library skills instructions workshops highlighting the similarities between using AO3 and ProQuest to locate and retrieve relevant information. For these workshops AO3 features were mapped to those of ProQuest to help demonstrate to students how they are already familiar with many of the concepts of academic knowledge organization and database use. AO3 was used to demonstrate various functions, with students having to first search for particular resources there. This was then followed by a search exercise related to academic resources in ProQuest, and then the similarities and differences between the two databases and interfaces were discussed. These workshops were generally met with a positive response indicating that this type of approach is something that could prove effective in better enabling the teaching of library information skills.
In the second presentation, “The citational practices of sci-fi fan podcasts” Amber Sewell shared the results of her analysis of the source transcripts of science fiction fan podcasts, which she defined as “podcasts made by fans (not officialy branded) about science fiction content (books, movies, TV shows, video games, etc.) that is commentary on the original content itself” (and not to be confused with audio fan fiction or audio dramas). Focusing on eleven important SF franchises such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who and so on, she searched four of the main podcast aggregating services to gather a total of 199 fan podcasts from which a sample of 33 shows and corresponding 94 episodes were selected for analysis. Compared to her expectations based on her own experience with the podcasts she listens to – her own “podcast-bubble” in her words – such as Witch, Please and This Podcast Will Kill You, where transcripts and the documenting of references therein are common practice, Amber Sewell was surprised to find a lack of both transcripts and citations in the fan podcasts she examined. The three most prominent citation types she found where 1) internal to podcast (theme music, cover art, etc), 2) incomplete (hyperlinked text without link), and 3) source of information (assumed to be fan-created) within the fandom itself. This is an ongoing examination, so we are looking forward to further results in the future.
Third, Nicole Neece presented her findings in “This sounds like an episode of The X-Files: Examining how Twitter users interpreted the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of sci-fi television.” The X-Files are positioned extremely well to be drawn on for making sense of or framing the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing governmental measures as well as the vaccination programs by fans of the show. First, one of the episodes in the revival series has a plot that paralleled the pandemic. As Nicole Neece explained people are treating The X-Files as an example of predictive programming in part due to this episode. And second, throughout the series there are various plot threads about the connections between vaccination and the government (including representations of vaccines as life-saving as well). Nicole Neece also found that the show was cited in many tweets as a reason for why the author of the tweet wanted to get vaccinated or not. Thus, the various narratives and sentiments in the series could be mobilized to frame the events of the pandemic in competing ways. Nevertheless, in her findings there was a predominance of anti-vaccination sentiments being supported by references to the show.
The fourth and final presentation of the first panel, “i’m mixing comic book canon and mcu canon to suit my own needs: Information Sharing as Community Building in a Fandom in Flux” by Alison Harding introduced her ethnography/autoethnography on the way new (sub-)communities are formed around shared interests in the wake of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) expanding as a result of the introduction of TV series such as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. By focusing on various information on AO3 such as story titles, tags, summaries, comments and authors’ usernames on AO3 Alison Harding was able to identify practices of signaling the boundaries of community formation, for example, in the details of the tags and notes/comments being added to the stories. Indeed, being able to properly decode the implied meaning of these elements was both a prerequisite for potentially identifying the community one may not even have known exists, and also acted as a form of reaffirmation of a nascent identity around the new community. Interestingly, whereas fandom and character/ship tags can act as more obvious markers of community inclusion, the boundaries of the new community are often also constructed by various trope, alternate universe and warning tags that can potentially require insider knowledge to fully decipher and can thus act as barriers to entry.
The second panel of the symposium showcased research on the representation and roles of libraries and archives in various science fiction media. In the first presentation “Repositories of Knowledge in Ernest Cline’s and Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One” Tom Ue and James Munday examined the role of the archive in both the book and the film version of Ready Player One. As the two presenters pointed out Kline’s novel and Spielberg’s movie allow us to explore archives, especially the tension between the stated objective of the archive to preserve knowledge and to make it transparent (communicated for example in the visual metaphor of the airy and open archive building in the movie), and its unspoken function of occluding things by both preserving/providing too much information (e.g. every single film that Halliday has seen is available in the archive) and at the same time lacking in certain data (e.g. all mentions of Kira expect for one were deleted). Tom Ue and James Munday further highlighted the way the book and the film not only engage with the problem of the transparency of or the occlusion enabled via the archive, but also feature descriptions of the various information processing practices and systems employed by the gunters, which could also be read as a reflection on fan information behavior.
Next, Ashley Lanni in “Data lost, forbidden or controlled?: The archivists of Horizon Forbidden West” drew attention to the way the video game Horizon Forbidden West offers a parable of the responsibility of information specialists towards the wider societies they are located in. To cite her conclusion: “The most empowering and socially responsible use of archives is making them both readily accessible and open to different perspectives within their records.” This ultimate message is conveyed through the protagonist Aloy, who interacts with the past and the information on it differently than others, she is curious towards technology and seeks out information. She also has a view of scarcity (similar to medieval archivists), so she keeps all information on the old world – this is why she resembles and archivist. Aloy and her allies also embrace the mission to teach others how to use a Focus (a kind of mini-computer in the game world) and decode information, rather than keep the information for themselves. In effect they act as experts helping to increase access to information. Different and less open approaches to the handling of information are represented by other groups and factions in the game further emphasizing the ethical message of the game embodied in the protagonist Aloy’s quest to help enable “transparency, open access and open acquisition” in relation to information accumulation.
In the third presentation of the panel “The Library Wants to Kill You: Places of Information as Battleground and Sanctum in Halo” Mackenzie Streissguth examined the seventh level of Halo: Combat Evolved from 2001, The Library and how games can have an effect on the way we conceive of libraries and their functions on both a representational and a practical level. The library in Halo is very reminiscent of a real world library (for example in its layout), yet its inhabitants and its contents all threaten the player. Could such a twisted representation of libraries have an effect on the kids playing these games? (It is important to note that in the game the library as a threatening place is transformed into a locus of quasi-religious-like transcendence through the meeting with the Librarian and by learning of her ultimate aim of elevating humanity.) At the same time, could the ludic navigation and situated learning skills mastered during the course of such games be put to use for enabling an improved learning experience in relation to real-world library science and academic skills (not unlike the approach outlined in Alayna Vander Veer and Austin Waters’ presentation)?
The keynote presentation Fandom, Fanzines, and Archiving Fannish History by Karen Hellekson similar to the previous years was an absolute treat – not just for scholars working from a LIS perspective, but for fan studies researchers of all stripes. Karen Hellekson took us on a tour of the early history of SF fan culture – and thus fandom in general – through the first events and fanzines as well as the technological and content evolution of fanzine creation. The early history of fandom can be traced back to the late 1920s with the first ever fanzine, The Comet released in 1930. Early fanzines like The Comet were printed with hectographs, which as their name implies should have been able to output around a hundred copies, but in reality were capable of around 20-30 pieces each. The majority of old fanzines researched by Karen Hellekson were, however, created with mimeographs and spirit duplicators, print technologies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century respectively that would even go on to still coexist in fanzine production alongside the photocopier for a while. One of the interesting features of these early fanzines is that contentwise the fan fiction they featured were not engaging with media properties, but were rather stories about the fans themselves. The early history of fan conventions can also be traced back to the second half of the 1930s, with the first known SF convention held in 1936 or 1937 and then in 1939 the first Worldcon taking place. Karen Hellekson also showed various images of hand-drawn pictures adorning early fanzines and explained about the difficulties of sharing findings from this type of research due to problems with copyright. The talk ended with a discussion of the emergence of media fandom and its subsequent split from SF fandom, and the role of Star Trek in shaping fandom and fanzines.
In closing I have to highlight the special FanLIS atmosphere that stayed true to itself once again. After a little warming up the party started to really take off in the chat, with ideas, comments, discussions, and just general feel-good community interaction taking center stage alongside the presentations. Indeed, one of the most fun and challenging aspects of all FanLIS symposia so far has been keeping up with the parallel flow of the chat creating a dynamically evolving paratext alongside the many wonderful talks being showcased.
A huge thank you to Ludi Price and Lyn Robinson for once again organizing such a stimulating and welcoming event, and to all the presenters and participants for providing so much exciting new intellectual stimulus for further contemplating the many intersections between fan studies, library and information science, and fan information behaviour. And to stay on theme for this year, let me end by saying: may the FanLIS symposium series live long and prosper!