Tavia asked:
This is an interesting statistic. At risk of waking the [[...]], might I ask how is your zine database organised -- would it be easy to analyse trends over time wrt the proportions of gen, slash, het and mixed ?
It's not really a database at all, just a list. All the sorting is done by hand.
There are several reasons why I didn't set it all up as a proper database in the first place. For one thing, I'd have to learn how. I am not very good with computers and basically just use them as glorified typewriters and telex machines.
Also, the database programs that I have seen do not print out in a very neat way, and I was planning eventually to do a paper version (although at this point I may not after all, given the price of printing. Possibly CDs are the way to go...).
(Oh-- for anyone who wonders what I'm talking about-- those zine title lists are the tip of the iceberg. I also have contents listings for most of the zines; you can find much of the material on Judith's website.)
And when I go over the material repeatedly, I catch more of the mistakes, which are many. I don't really mind, because the whole project functions for me in somewhat the same way that playing solitaire does for many people-- it takes just barely enough brain power to make it interesting, and the repetitiveness is kind of soothing. (Of course, it's precisely because I do it when I'm almost asleep that I make so many mistakes, but happily they are very fixable-- to my mind one of the greatest advantages of computers over typewriters.)
Anyway, feel free to play with the raw data if you like. When I do things like search for a certain type of story, I just search and pull out what I find, rather than having any kind of automatic sorting mechanism.
Sarah