This article describes the first two parts of a three-stage study investigating the information behaviour of fans and fan communities, focusing on fans of cult media. A literature analysis shows that information practices are an inherent and major part of fan activities, and that fans are practitioners of new forms of information consumption and production, showing sophisticated activities of information organisation and dissemination. A subsequent Delphi study, taking the novel form of a 'serious leisure' Delphi, in which the participants are not experts in the usual sense, identifies three aspects of fan information behaviour of particular interest beyond the fan context: information gatekeeping; classifying and tagging; and entrepreneurship and economic activity.

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PurposeThis article describes the third part of a three-stage study investigating the information behaviour of fans and fan communities, the first stage of which is described in the study by Price and Robinson (2017).Design/methodology/approachUsing tag analysis as a method, a comparative case study was undertaken to explore three aspects of fan information behaviour: information gatekeeping; classifying and tagging and entrepreneurship and economic activity. The case studies took place on three sites used by fans–Tumblr, Archive of Our Own (AO3) and Etsy. Supplementary semi-structured interviews with site users were used to augment the findings with qualitative data.FindingsThese showed that fans used tags in a variety of ways quite apart from classification purposes. These included tags being used on Tumblr as meta-commentary and a means of dialogue between users, as well as expressors of emotion and affect towards posts. On AO3 in particular, fans had developed a practice called “tag wrangling” to mitigate the inherent “messiness” of tagging. Evidence was also found of a “hybrid market economy” on Etsy fan stores. From the study findings, a taxonomy of fan-related tags was developed.Research limitations/implicationsFindings are limited to the tagging practices on only three sites used by fans during Spring 2016, and further research on other similar sites are recommended. Longitudinal studies of these sites would be beneficial in understanding how or whether tagging practices change over time. Testing of the fan-tag taxonomy developed in this paper is also recommended.Originality/valueThis research develops a method for using tag analysis to describe information behaviour. It also develops a fan-tag taxonomy, which may be used in future research on the tagging practices of fans, which heretofore have been a little-studied section of serious leisure information users.

As Library and Information Science research has evolved, new domains of interest have shaped the field, and with them comes a need to question the appropriateness of applying traditional methodologies to these new domains. This panel focuses on the methodological realities of studying fun life‐contexts and will address how researching a new domain comes with challenges and opportunities. The group of scholars on this panel all share an appreciation for identifying and exploring the unique information experiences within fun life‐contexts, and engage with a variety of subfields, including information behavior, information organization, embodied information, and fan communities. This interactive panel will consist of five short presentations from each of the panelists and a moderated Q&A led by moderator, Jenna Hartel. The panelists each share some examples of their recent work studying fun life‐contexts, reflect on their experience researching in a new domain, and develop themes and questions that should be addressed in future work.

Although several notable collections of fan fiction exist in libraries, such as the Sandy Hereld Fanzine Collection at Texas A&M University (http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/149935) and the digital fanzine archives at the University of Iowa (http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/sc/resources/fandomresources/), not much attention is given to the systematic selection, acquisition, indexing, preservation, and sharing of fan works in the UK, considering the popularity of fandom, the volume of creative work that exists, and the rate at which new texts are produced. Here we present the results of an investigation into the extent to which UK libraries collect and manage fan fiction, and our attempts to ascertain the reasons underlying collection policy in local, public, special, academic, and national institutions. Our report is based on a review of recent literature, an analysis of the collection policies of a selection of UK libraries, and a brief survey of the views of Library & Information Science students. The empirical work was carried out in spring 2016. Results show that there is a little-known and less-understood dark side to fan fiction, in regard to how it is understood and valued in the library sector, which feeds a widening gap in our cultural heritage.