Sandy Hereld Memorial Digitized Media Fanzine Collection

The Sandy Hereld Memorial Digitized Media Fanzine Collection is a digital collection of scanned printed media fanzines, the first of its kind. It has been named after slash fan Sandy Hereld with her partner Brie’s and her friend Rachael Sabotini’s permissions. The project is ongoing and is actively accepting submissions and contributions from fans.
The collection is stored at Texas A&M University (TAMU) and was launched in November 2013 with over 500 digitized fanzines. The collection includes all types of fanzines, from fan fiction novels and anthologies, to newsletters, clubzines and letterzines. All genres are represented: gen, het, and slash along with multiple fandoms covering many, many fandoms. More than 200 fanzine publishers, writers, and artists participated in the launch. In 2014, an additional 1000 scans were added to this collection.
In August 2015, the collection began offering a limited selection of items to the public after obtaining additional publisher, author and artist permissions.
The collection includes scanning contributions from fans across almost every time zone in the US, UK, Scotland, Europe, and Australia. Dozens of other fans have pooled their fanzine collections together to create a virtual library of over 13,000 hard copy fanzines available to be loaned for future scanning. – personal notes, accessed June 11, 2019.
Funding for the project came from the participants themselves who provided their own scanning equipment, fanzine binding machines, and postage for the mailing of loaned fanzines. Temporary server storage space for the scans was donated by Walter from Squidge.org and the fandom side of the project (communications, logistics, organization) was coordinated by Morgan Dawn.
==Naming the Collection==
==FAQ==
1. What is the Sandy Hereld Memorial Digitized Media Fanzine Collection and how are the materials collected and stored? 
The repository is located at The Cushing Memorial Library & Archives at Texas A&M University and is part of their existing Library Collections. It consists of scans of print fanzines containing fan fiction written about modern media (TV or movies) along with newsletters published by fans of modern media. The PDFs are scans of the fanzines as they were originally published. Scans will be in Adobe PDF formats and the content will not be edited. This means that some zines may have wear and tear on them as many of them are over 30 years old and have been handled by many readers. The zine scans were donated by fans who scanned zines from their own or their friends’ collections. A few more recent online e-zines have also been included to showcase the migration of fanzines from print to online formats. 
 
2.	 What about copyrights? 
Media based fan fiction has a long and rich tradition having existed in print, and now online format, for over 40 years. Literary fan fiction has existed even longer. The majority of fan fiction qualifies as transformative works which are protected in the United States under the fair use doctrine (For more information about transformative fanworks, see the Organization for Transformative Works). As for the rights to the fanzines themselves, there are many submission paths. Fanzines that are submitted with publisher permission are submitted with the understanding that the authors and artists can contact the repository to request that their fanworks be removed (see #6 below). Authors and artists or their heirs can give their permission. Some older US fanzines were published without the required copyright notices for that time. Many of the recent e-zines have been published under Creative Commons licenses or have been offered freely to the public for downloading without restrictions. In a few instances, material will be included after consulting archival best practices.
3.	 Who will have access to the fanzines? 
At this time (2019), access to the majority of fanzine scans is limited to Texas A&M university faculty, staff or students (or those possessing a university-issued NET ID) along with on-site library visitors.While the general public can register to create an online library account, access to the collection is not included in that free account and they will not be able to view the zines online unless those zines were released to public view by the publishers or if they are in the public domain. By restricting access for preservation, research and educational purposes, the university can collect a broader range of fan materials. Starting in August 2015, the university began offering greater access to a limited selection of zines after obtaining additional permissions from the publishers, authors and artists contributing to the selected zines. Over time, the hope is to be able to offer additional online access as TAMU's ultimate goal is to provide the broadest level of access possible. Texas A&M University is a state institution, whose library collections are public, non-profit resources for research, education and historical preservation. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Collection is a major collecting area at Cushing Library, and the collection is one of the largest in the nation. In addition to the Hereld Memorial Collection, they possess varied materials such as the papers of George R.R. Martin (author of ‘’A Song of Ice and Fire’’), Michael Moorcock, Elizabeth Moon and other authors, as well as many thousands of pulp magazines, other periodicals and monographs.
4.	 Why are they doing this at all? 
Fanzines are fascinating examples of popular culture and the ways in which people engage with media. There is a growing interest in preserving these materials and making them accessible to current fans (many of whom have never seen a paper fanzine), future fans and researchers. Digitizing the items will add a new level of access and preservation beyond that obtained from retaining the paper versions. (Also, some of the materials now exist only in digital format, with a limited online life, making their preservation even more important.) Digitization will also enable sight impaired readers to gain greater access to print media fandom history.
5.	 How will they protect my anonymity, if I so desire it? 
The names of authors contributing to anthologies will not be listed in the online finding aid. The descriptive information for fanzine novels in the online finding aid will include only the author’s name as given in the original publication itself. If this is an alias, the author’s real identity will not be revealed. If the novel was published under the author’s real name, they can contact the repository and request that the novel be removed. And finally, the names of contributors to slash fanzines have been abbreviated for increased privacy. Currently, fanzines are cataloged in a variety ways in special collections around the world. Most catalogs list the full author and publisher name, as they would any other publication and offer no abbreviations for either gen and slash contributors.
6.	 What if my material is contained in someone else’s work? They may give permission whereas I may not. What happens then? 
Access can be restricted for a particular image or PDF file, meaning that TAMU can provide access to the anthology or other work as a whole, while preventing your own work from being seen.
7.	 What about adult material (slash fanzines, explicit art)? 
Adult material and explicit art (both slash and het) will be clearly marked. 
 
8.	 Who was Sandy Hereld and why was the repository named after her? 
Sandy Hereld was a slash media fan who entered fandom during the period when print fanzines were still the main method of sharing fan fiction. Like many of her peers, she embraced the new Internet medium, helping found one of the earliest slash mailing lists, Virgule-L. A keen lover of fandom history, she searched for a home for her aging print fanzines and, in 2008, donated them to the University of Iowa, paving the way for many other fans to make similar donations. After she died in 2011 from breast cancer, her friends and family decided to honor her passion for fandom, fanzines and fandom history by establishing the Sandy Hereld Memorial Digitized Fanzine Collection at Texas A&M University. As one friend put it: “Where’s the party? WHEREVER SNADY IS RIGHT NOW.” – personal notes, accessed August 9. 2017.
9.	 Is this an OTW project? 
No, this is an independent project that is being run by Texas A&M University. Support for the project, in terms of permissions, donations of time and fanzine scans, and coordination is coming from volunteers of the media fandom community, many of whom have been in fandom for over 40 years.
==Participants' Thoughts==
These are comments from the participants who gave permission for the initial phase (the closed collection). All of the comments are quoted here on Fanlore with permission:
==Other Reactions: Fans==
These are comments posted in 2015 when part of the collection became available online with the creators' permission:
 
 
 
 
 
==Further Reading==
* (August 22, 2023)
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Multimedia Zines
Category:Print Zine Archives
Category:2013 Archives
Category:2010s Archives
Category:2020s Archives