The Austin Fanzine Project is an institution-independent project intended to improve access to the documents of a recently-historical subculture – the Austin, Texas underground music scene of the 1990s. The project has also blossomed into a sandbox for creative experimentation with digital archives and digital humanities methods and tools.
To date the project volunteers have digitized and posted the first batch of fanzines; researched digital archives best practices; crafted a set of project policies; experimented with crowd-sourced transcription and indexing using new open-source software; explored ways to virtually visualize the connections in real-life communities via maps, e-books, and audio tours; compared archival and linked data standards for describing people and relationships; provided a unique and supportive environment for three stellar Capstone projects produced by graduate students from the University of Texas’s School of Information; and presented panels, workshops, talks, and posters at six professional conferences.
You can help out by transcribing fanzines from home in your spare time! See AustinFanzineProject.org for more information about our project.
