Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Yrindor, who volunteers as an Open Doors chair assistant and administrative volunteer.
How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
Open Doors is responsible for helping to preserve at-risk fannish materials. The bulk of our committee work is devoted to working with archive moderators to import the fanworks from at-risk online archives to AO3. We also help coordinate the donation of physical fannish materials—things like print zines and con programs—to institutions who are interested in collecting and preserving them.
We've also recently launched a new project to convert stories from print zines and post them to AO3. As an Administrative Volunteer, I'm responsible for a lot of the project management tasks that go into our work, which range from communicating with archive moderators about deadlines to coordinating with other OTW committees on public announcement posts and system bugs. As a Chair Assistant, I also help with creating committee reports, running meetings, and training new volunteers.
What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
Open Doors holds regular working meetings for all of our roles. We distribute meeting facilitation across our Chairs and Chair Assistants, so in a typical week I will lead 2-3 meetings. When we've just recruited new volunteers, I spend most of the meeting time leading walkthroughs and answering questions.
When we have fewer new volunteers, I also work on tasks for archives I'm assigned to during the meeting times. Outside of the official meeting times, I'm frequently around in our committee spaces to answer questions as they come up. Open Doors work has enough complex documentation and large spreadsheets that I try to keep the bulk of my Admin Volunteer work to when I have at least an hour on my computer to focus on it.
What made you decide to volunteer?
I originally joined OTW as a Tag Wrangling volunteer back in 2015. At that time, I was in library school, and I was considering specializing in cataloging. I was also an avid fic reader on AO3 and loved the tagging and search features.
When I saw a post for Tag Wrangling recruitment, it seemed like the perfect intersection of my interests. Fast forward five years, and my professional work had shifted to focus on digitization and digital projects. I had also seen announcements for Open Doors imports on the AO3 news blog, so when they put out a call for recruitment, it felt like another wonderful intersection of my professional and fannish interests.
What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
Definitely communication. Open Doors manages multiple projects, but at their core they're all about moving fannish archives from one place to another in order to preserve them. Any time there's movement across systems, there has to be some degree of translation from the original format to the structure the new system expects. That could mean anything from mapping tags on an archive to the corresponding tags on AO3 to deciding how to convert mailing list posts to AO3 works.
It can also mean facilitating communication across groups who may not all use the same vocabulary—for example, coordinating zine donations between fans and academic librarians.
What fannish things do you like to do?
I'm primarily a fanfic reader and writer. As a writer, I jump around fandoms a lot, primarily within the anime and manga world, but my first and forever fandom is Naruto. I also dabble in other fannish crafts here and there; I've done everything from bookbinding to cosplay to wood burning.
As a reader, I gravitate toward tropes more than specific ships or fandoms. Some of my favorite AO3 tags to read in are Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Caretaking, and Serious Injuries.
Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.
The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.
