I don’t like wading into Ao3 debates, but I want to give my professional opinion on Ao3 with regard to archives vs. libraries.
I am a professional librarian (MSLS) and I have worked in both archives and public libraries and a lot of the confusion and concern I see surrounding Ao3 is a fundamental misunderstanding of How Archives Work.
An archive is a collection related to a subject. That subject often a person but sometimes a field or concept or project. And the purpose of an archive is to keep everything. And I mean everything. I was going to say “short of biohazards” but since I know there’s a sealed R. Crumb Devil Gal chocolate bar in the UNC Chapel Hill archives, we really do mean everything.
When a collection of materials–which are usually unique and original and can be photos, manuscripts, letters, recordings (audio and/or visual), notes and notebooks, objects, published books, whatever–on and/or from the subject arrive at the archive, they are examined, preserved for longevity, accessioned and cataloged (added to the archive’s records), and added to the archive. You measure collections in linear feet. As in, once it’s all preserved and boxed and secure, you note how many feet of shelf space it takes up. And some of y'all on Ao3 have a lot of linear feet to your name (and I’m proud of you).
This is an archive: it is designed to preserve the original materials related to a subject. That is its purpose. Archives are how we have the original scroll manuscript of On the Road, for example, or the Lomax recordings of American folksongs, or Tijuana Bibles, or James Joyce’s loveletters to Nora.
Now you, a member of the public, can access some archives. Some are easier to access than others. The one I worked in was open to the public; good luck getting into the British Archives without a good reason.
So now apply this to Ao3–which is an archive both in name and in purpose. It is intended to preserve fan-created content long term. And this means everything, whether you personally like the materials or not. It is a repository for as much as possible.
And the “whether you personally like the materials or not” is important, hence why I mentioned Jim’s loveletters and Tijuana Bibles in particular. (RIP Jim, you would have loved pegging.)
If it’s made by fans and it exists, we should keep it to document the history and progression of fandom. That is the point. We have lost enough materials related to the subject of fans of media and we don’t need to lose any more.
The fact of the matter is that Ao3 is only one facet of the OTW, which preserves other fan-related materials (convention booklets and zines, for example). Somehow Ao3, an archive on the subject of fanfiction, has been divorced from the rest of the project, mostly by way of “purity culture” and panic over “dangerous” fiction.
The fact that you can go through an archive and find interesting information is the other side of archives. No, they shouldn’t be like the banker’s box of old letters stuffed in my closet. Yes, they should be organized and as accessible as is appropriate for the state of the materials.
It’s really, really cool to find stuff in an archive, I’m not even going to lie. I have done it before and I will do it again. And yet there are other items in an archive that I might not want or need or be interested in at all–but they’re still there. That’s the cataloging and accessioning: to keep up with what’s there, to stay “on topic” with collecting, and to be able to find things in that archive. Bless the tag wranglers who are doing the cataloging at Ao3.
The pearl clutching seems to come from 1. the creation of “dangerous” fanworks and 2. public access to those “dangerous” fanworks. These are issues of “purity culture” and opinions on censorship and should not involve Ao3.
Ao3, under the umbrella of the OTW, is a documentation and preservation project first and foremost.
Meanwhile: libraries.
We’re all basically familiar with libraries, right? A collection of materials designed to be used by the people who use the library. That’s the basics.
And that is not the same as an archive.
Library books, especially public library books, age like milk. I cannot tell you what a relief it has been to throw away dirty, smelly, stained, damaged, sand-in-the-covers books when a replacement comes in. I know there’s a Cult of the Book around here, but books are not all that inherently precious. The latest James Patterson novel is not a survivor of the Library of Alexandria (which was more of an archive anyway).
If a book is so rare that it cannot be replaced, it should be in an archive or a rare book collection and not a circulating library.
The first rule of libraries is “know your user population.” To use the example of public libraries, you need to know what books the people want to read (among other things).
Libraries, generally speaking, are more apt to adjust their collection to suit their users. A library in, for example, a prison is likely to have a lot of books on law. A church library will likely have a lot of religious books and, depending on the church, may not have any books by LGBTQ+ authors. These collections reflect their users (and also the controls or limitations placed on those users but I digress). A public library bookmobile taken to childcare centers will have a lot of children’s books. I have packed a bookmobile for that project so trust me on this one.
The news is full of challenges being laid against certain books in libraries–especially school libraries and public libraries. In some cases, the challenge may be valid. In most current cases, it’s really about exterting political and/or religious control over public institutions but couched in concerns about “the children.”
And, quite frankly, that’s what the “concerns” about what Ao3 contains feel like to me.
An archive with open and easy access to the public has been mistaken for a circulating library. A circulating library might adjust its collection to suit the wants, needs, and concerns of its user population. Ao3 is not a library. Ao3, Archive of Our Own, is an archive. It is designed for preservation and you, the user, can make use of its cataloging tools to examine the contents of the archive. It is not a circulating library. Things you don’t like or don’t want are going to be in archives.
