One of the greatest drawbacks with Omeka is that it does not provide flexibility in

deciding which information should have the highest priority. Omeka focuses primarily on

surface level content, such as the archived materials cover, author, subject and form (ie. book,

fanzine, newspaper …). It essentially archives anything that can be immediately identified from

looking at the cover of the material. Some may argue that this provides a realistic approach, as it

is similar to a passerby glancing at a book or magazine. However, our group felt that this

approach is not best suited for archiving our chosen fanzine; Starwind: Science Fiction and

Fantasy. We considered Starwind’s most interesting and important aspect to be its authors and

the way that they incorporated themselves in both the creation of the fanzine and in the short

stories. The Omeka platform provides minimal space for preserving the authors and placed little

priority on the topic. In order to archive Starwind in manner we felt better portrayed the fanzine,

we decided to supplement the Omeka archive with a group Facebook page.

Facebook is an excellent platform for archive individuals. Despite social media being its

main function, Facebook is one of the largest archives in the world and contains a plethora of

information on every single user. Facebook is centered on each user and allows for very detailed

inputs. Facebook’s networking capabilities can also connections that would otherwise be difficult

to see. It would also portray Starwind exactly the way we look at it by prioritizing the individuals

and not just what appears on the cover. Yet, the greatest difference between Facebook and

Omeka (and the ultimate reason why we chose it) is the size of its user base. There are well over

1.7 billion individuals using Facebook (Whittaker, 2016). Therefore, for most, Facebook is a

familiar site and easy to navigate. Omeka, with a much smaller user base, will be generally

unfamiliarly looking and could be a little difficult to navigate.

 Reimagining the fanzine as a Facebook page was really interesting and I definitely felt

that it adhered to many of the topics we covered in class. It particular reminded me of Mcluhan’s

arguments in the “Medium is the Message.” The themes and arguments presented in Mucluhan’s

paper are glaringly present in our reimagining of archiving Starwind. In his paper, Mucluhan

states that it is “the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association

and action” (1964, p.2). This was one of the problems with the Omeka platform. Omeka is

designed such that it distracts the viewer’s focus away from the author, whom we felt were the

most interesting and important aspect of the fanzine. As per Mucluhan’s statement, Omeka

affects the way the individuals interact with Starwind and in turn changes what readers takeaway

from the fanzine. By changing the platform and therefor the medium, we were able to shape how

viewers see the zine, interact with it and what they take away from it towards our liking.

Two other texts that came to mind while recreating the Omeka archive where Nox and

Agrippa. In class we discussed many different themes about the two texts and materiality but one

of the most crucial things we touched on was how the two attempted to transgress the medium

they were on and still replicate the feeling of the original medium. This more evident in Nox

where the pages look as they had been taken from notebook, but Agrippa’s digital version of the

text is the same idea. The purpose of using this technique was to capture the feeling of the

original work. Our reimaging of Omeka follows something that is almost the opposite of what

Agrippa and Nox aim to do. Instead of trying to completely replicate Starwind and the feelings

associated with reading the actual fanzine we attempt to embellish the fanzine and what we

consider are its most interesting aspects. Our reimagining cannot even be read in a traditional

matter and is a completely different feeling from reading the print fanzine. Nevertheless, we do
not believe that this ‘ruins’ the archive or the fanzine in anyway; it simply supplements it.

Omeka on the other hand neither replicates nor supplements the fanzine.

There were however many drawbacks to using Facebook as a platform for our concept.

Starwind is a fairly limited circulated fanzine that only ran for two issues in 1976. There is

simply not much information on the fanzine. It would therefore seem logical that focusing on the

multiple authors would provide more information. Unfortunately, most of Starwind’s authors

used pseudonyms. This was not immediately apparent to us as we initially presumed that we

unable tofind information on the authors because they had died a long time ago. Digging deeper

into the author’s bio’s (from the zine) suggested that this was not case. For example, in his bio

Edmond Hammond Jr. shares that he graduated from Ohio State University in 1974, but his

name does not appear in that years yearbook or the yearbook for 1973 and 1975. When we

researched other authors we discovered that some had become prominent science fiction writers

and we learned that the names listed within the fanzine were the pseudonym’s they used early on

in their career. My belief is that our concept would be better applied to a fanzine that featured

more prominent individuals. Given enough time it would certainly be possible to identify the

anonymous writers ( Edmond Hammond Jr is probably one of the individuals in the 1974 year

book) but it would certainly take a great amount of research and time. On the other hand, this

concept cannot not be used for fairly recent fanzines as most authors may already have a

Facebook account and would not take to kindly to seeing someone masquerading as them.

This project was split up between us by the different authors. There were nine authors

who contributed short stories to the fanzine. Each person in our group was given with three

different authors and we each did the same the tasks. One of us started the Facebook group, then

we each created Facebook pages for the authors. For each author I was tasked to do, I researched
and input their personal bio, such as their birthdate, hometown and current occupation. I then

uploaded images from the fanzine which were associated with the short story that they each

wrote. We also attempted to emulate the voices of the authors while posting what they each

wrote for Starwind on their Facebook pages. I attempted to emulate the author’s voice by looking

at interviews that each author gave and picking out their tone and sentence structure. For

example, I was able to identify from the an interview of Edmond Hamilton that at around the

time he published his work most people considered science fiction writing as low tier writing. As

a result, Hamilton was a little desperate to get people to read his stories. While I was able to

emulate the voices of Hamilton and Karen Lee Killoug, I was unable to do this for Elbert

Lindsey, who I was unable to find information on (he used a pseudonym and did not become that

prominent of a writer). For him, I imagined a little of what he would say. However, to make sure

I did not create a new persona for Lindsey, my posts directly quoted sentences he wrote in

Starwind.

More than anything, this reimagining has dealt with interactions between different media,

its materiality or lack of materiality and how these aspects change the ultimate experience and

what readers take away from the fanzine. It is not a hundred percent guaranteed that viewers will

see what we want them to see. However, regardless of how our reimagining changes viewer’s

perspective, any change in the medium and materiality will have a significant impact on the

reader’s perspective of the material. .

Works Cited
McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Whittaker, G. C. (2016, July 28). Facebook Now Has 1.7 Billion Users. Retrieved December 09,
2016, from http://www.popsci.com/facebook-has-same-number-users-as-there-were-
people-100-years-ago