Our spreadsheets are built in Google Sheets so that all of our volunteers can access them. They contain basic metadata for each work in an archive—such as title, creator, tags, and author's notes—and metadata about when they were imported to AO3. Many of the spreadsheets are compiled by our Tech team from archives with databases, but other spreadsheets are compiled manually by the moderator or our Import Assistants, who open each work and record the metadata by hand. It can take quite some time, since sometimes our archives have hundreds or thousands of works, so we're very grateful for the hard work of our volunteers!
As for physical zines, Open Doors has an entire project dedicated to importing works from zines to AO3 called the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP). Like compiling our spreadsheets, it requires a lot of manual labor to scan, proofread, and upload zines, but we're very excited to help bring works from classic fanzines to AO3! If you'd like to read more, you can take a look at Open Doors Announces New Import of Fanzine Works and Five Things Julie Bozza Said by our senior FSHP volunteer.
And yes, we do have works imported from the 1960s! You can find them by searching the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project | FSHP tag, sorting by Date Updated, and going to the very last page. The oldest works right now are from Spockanalia #1!
Sometimes, working with archives through Open Doors is a challenge, especially when there are so many works that the spreadsheets seem neverending, but I'm really grateful for the chance to help preserve fandom history, so it's worth it.
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OTW_Open_Doors (Official) Tue 02 Dec 2025 02:55AM UTC
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