Singular Within Multitude: Creating a Personal Archive on AO3

[kalloway]

Since peoriapeoriawhereart posted about Series on AO3 and how they can be used to further contextualize and otherwise organize longer sets of related works, I thought I'd take a few paragraphs to talk about rebuilding my personal archive, The Lemonade Cafe, on AO3.

I started The Lemonade Cafe on Geocities in early 2003, as my personal fic archive mostly for Kingdom Hearts and FFVII. In 2004, I had a friend with dedicated 'adult' hosting offer to host me, and I promptly got comfy with FTP and got to work! However, in late 2019, there isn't as much draw for a static personal archive only findable through random searching (or my journal) and it hasn't been updated in forever since I botched my FTP access (and my friend has had quite a bit of Life lately and I'd rather they take any breathers they get caring for themself, not fixing my FTP access).

In mid-2017, I made an AO3 Collection called The Lemonade Cafe and began the slow process of moving everything over. It's been humbling and I've fixed a lot of typos, but it's also been very interactive. By (re)gifting old works to people I wrote them for, I've rekindled friendships thought lost (or at least said hi). I've gotten comments from people overjoyed to have finally re-found certain works, or those who'd been fans of the old Lemonade Cafe and were sad it was no longer being updated.

Now, for the technical- the collection is set as Closed, but that only means that other people can't post to it, only I can. I don't need to approve my own stuff. It does mean that for everything I post, I need to add 'lemonadecafe' to the Collections field and because it's a closed collection, it does not show up on the drop down. However, the form will accept it anyway and post without issue. (Or use the Post to Collection button from the actual collection, which I absolutely always forget about since I'm usually working from my dashboard.)

Why remake my personal archive when... I have my profile right there that also lists everything? I'll be honest. It's for this. An alphabetical listing of fandoms I've written for, instead of the quantitative and somewhat random version that my dashboard (Kalloway) gives me that usually requires me CTRL+F'ing to find things.

It offers things like this nifty tag cloud, and even though I'm not utilizing it as fully as I could, a Collection's profile offers quite a bit more space for text information compared to an individual user's profile page.

Basically, there's an independent feature set available in a Collection that an individual user might find useful and interesting, especially if archiving from a previous personal site of any sort.

Well, and I think it looks cool, too.

Comments

[isis]

This is actually really interesting, thanks! I agree that it would be nice to be able to reorder the dashboard fandom list by something other than 'how many stories I've written in this fandom', since the first several fandoms are fandoms I've been out of for a long time. Also, I have long been frustrated by the short list of most common tags, and the tag cloud would be great to see for an individual user.

[kalloway]

Thank you and you're welcome! I've been meaning to write up my experiences for awhile and this seemed like a good time. ^_^ (I'm glad I'm not alone with dashboard fandom list frustration. An alphabetical order toggle would be all the difference, or even being able to set a handful of fandoms to always display first...)

[mekare]

OMg you individually imported over 1000 works? Wow. Thank you for doing that.

[kalloway]

Apparently! I had no idea what totals would be like when I started and I'm still going (maaaybe 300 works left? maybe?), but I'm basically taking the slow and steady route. (Open Doors doesn't work with individuals, alas, only multi-author archives, so this was really my only option. The mass-import tool unfortunately drags over waaaay too much code and junk from my old site and it's more work stripping that all out than just doing a handful of single new works every day.)

[alias_sqbr]

Ooh, I'm not sure I'll do this but the thought hadn't even occurred to me. Thanks!

[kalloway]

^_^ You're welcome! I'd suspected it was something not a lot of people had considered and definitely wanted to share the options/tools offered.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Glad that you took some time to talk about collections. I've used them for several stories that I didn't want to imply a best order for, as well as to give people a reread option by work length.

I'd love more people to know self-collections are an option, so thanks for the write up.

[kalloway]

I've mostly used Series for related stories, at least ones where there's a vague enough timeline to follow. I do like your use of multiple series for different plot threads throughout a greater body of work!

I also have seen certain authors just put all their work for a particular fandom in a series, so that readers could subscribe to just that series and only get notifs for when that author posts for one fandom, not everything they post, which I also think is a nifty use of the option.

I think most people associate collections with challenges and exchanges and don't consider them for personal use as well.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I started looking at collections when copperbadge was running into issues regarding the anonymous getting activated when it wasn't a reveal community situation. That let me figure out more and think how it could be used in addition to 'on script'.

I first used the multiple series when I "answered" an age old The Sentinel question in the midst of MCU. And then committed a second crossover. (It feels like the interface changed, but it might just be browser update.)

Part of it is I've been hearing about ways novelists are restructuring works in a more, choose your own? and wanted to give a touch of that, since I am hewing a bit more comic book for all that it is MCU.

[cuddyclothes]

Did you write all of those fics? Sorry, that's the kind of question that sounds like, "wow, did you read all those books?" looking at someone's bookcase.

I don't quite get the listed fandoms stuff.

[kalloway]

Yes, of course I did, as well as several hundred more that I'm still archiving. This post is talking about my personal archive, which means it contains my works.

I'm not sure what isn't explained well enough? A collection gives an option of viewing fandoms created for in alphabetical order, whereas a personal dashboard gives a listing of fandoms in order of most-works-for to least, the latter of which can be difficult to navigate for someone with a great number of fandoms.

[cuddyclothes]

Oh, I see! Thanks for explaining it.

[schneefink]

That looks like a cool idea! Especially for people who have written a lot.

[kalloway]

It's worked out really well for me, which is why I wanted to share. (And yeah, probably more useful for folks with larger bodies of work.)

[yourlibrarian]

Given all the fandoms you've written for, I can see why having them listed alphabetically by fandom can be a nice feature. As far as I can tell the tag cloud utilizes only the additional tags on works rather than including character or relationship ones.

I just started working on a collection in October for a community but one thing I found frustrating is that I couldn't create a bookmark set for the community itself. The bookmarks instead end up in my own account and can only be copied over to the community.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I wonder if the tag cloud is meant to synergy with the ticky boxes, which don't include or exclude additional tags populated by default.

[kalloway]

I actually only noticed the tag cloud when making this post! But it seemed pretty cool (though a character/relationship version would be lovely too)!

Oh, that's good to knew re: bookmarks. I was just thinking about trying to bookmark related works (a couple translations and some cover art, iirc) into the collection and I guess that might be a little tricky. I mean, I certainly don't mind them also being on my account, it just seems redundant.

[luthienberen]

I found this interesting and enlightening. Thank you for sharing. I am now considering using the Collection idea for a set of fic I am slowly writing in the same alternate universe, but in no particular order (and also not setting an order in which anyone must read through).

[kalloway]

Thank you, I'm glad you found the info helpful! (I even found some new stuff while making sure I'd covered everything while doing the write-up! I think there are a lot of little things on AO3 that are easy to miss or under-utilize.)

[luthienberen]

Late response, but I just wished to say, following your enlightening post I have gone ahead and created a collection for my fic which is set in the same universe, but doesn't need to be read in a particular order. :-)

I agree with you, I think there is a lot of functionality on A03 that is easy to miss - I really need to delve into it more!