New York, U.S.A. — The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) will be celebrating its 5th anniversary on September 5. The OTW is a nonprofit run by and for fans to provide access to and preserve the history of fanworks and fan cultures. It does this primarily through five projects:

• Fanlore is a wiki within which fans can document their understandings of and experiences in fandom. This encyclopedic resource is an archive of fandom history and terminology for fans; it also gives context for outside media, academics, and people new to fandom in a format wherein fans are in control of their own representation. Fanlore’s 20,720 articles have undergone 386,428 edits.
• Legal Advocacy: The OTW believes that fanworks are creative and transformative, core fair uses, and will therefore be proactive in protecting and defending fanworks from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. This help is not limited to those fans or projects directly connected with OTW. Our legal team has submitted amicus briefs in the cases of Ryan Hart vs. Electronic Arts and Salinger v. Colting, and won a DMCA exemption for noncommercial remix makers from the Copyright Office in 2009. They have submitted a petition in 2012 for renewal of this exemption and are awaiting a decision from the Copyright Office.
• The Archive of Our Own (AO3) is an open-source digital archive for fanfiction and other fanworks that hosts 431,000 works from 65,000 fan creators.
• Open Doors offers shelter to at-risk fannish content by archiving and preserving fanworks and artifacts of fan culture through hosting at the AO3 or through our partnership with the University of Iowa Special Collections department.
• Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is a peer-reviewed academic journal that promotes scholarship on fanworks and fan practices. It published its 10th issue in June, 2012, a special issue on fan activism guest edited by noted media scholar Henry Jenkins.TWC is a Gold Open Access publication indexed in all major academic databases, open access directories, and services such as Google Scholar.

Board member Francesca Coppa said “The OTW demonstrates the talent, skills, and passion of fandom worldwide. We are staffed by 490 fans internationally representing a variety of fan experiences, and we hope to engage and support more fans over the next five years.”

For more information contact communications@transformativeworks.org.

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