Stories on the archive (or here) should be considered copyrighted material. They're original works,
* and most authors actually put up copyright notices on their stories.
In general, that means you can't use them without permission, but we're talking about an academic citation. If you read something in a book by, say, H. G. Wells and wanted to quote it in your paper, you'd be able to do that so long as you properly credited him for his words and ideas.
Now, fanfic authors are a lot easier to contact than H. G. Wells, and you even know some of them personally. That shouldn't change the way the citation works. I'm sure authors would be flattered to know you chose their work for your paper, but going strictly by the guidelines, you don't need to contact them first.
As for the actual citation, I've checked out a couple of sites. Specifically,
here and
here. From the second site:
Document from a Web Site [5.9.1]
Author. "Title of Web Page." Title of the Site. Editor. Date and/or Version Number. Name of Sponsoring Institution. Date of Access <URL>.
Sherman, Chris. "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About URL." SearchEngineWatch. Ed. Danny Sullivan. 24 Aug. 2004. 4 Sept. 2004 <
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3398511>.
Going by that, then, you'd want:
Kraft, Sara. "Wherever You Will Go." The Lois and Clark Fanfic Archive. Ed. Tricia Walpole. Nov. 2004. The Lois and Clark Fanfic Archive. 29 Apr. 2005. <
http://www.lcfanfic.com/stories/2004/wherev.txt>.
(Note, BTW, that lines after the first are supposed to be indented. I just can't do that here because of the way the boards handle spaces.)
In the slot for Editor, you could use the EIC of the archive (Doctor Klein's LabRat), the GE of the story, or perhaps the BRs. The GE would probably be the closest to what's meant, but unfortunately, GEs aren't always credited. My inclination is to list the GE if credited, leave out the editor if not.
Similarly, the "sponsoring institution" can be listed as "Lois and Clark Fanfic Archive," "Lois and Clark Fanfic Archive Staff," "FoLCs," or just left blank. The archive is maintained on a volunteer basis by the archive staff. It's not sponsosred or run by any larger entity. In other words, in this case, the title of the page and the sponsoring institution are the same.
Hope this helps more than confuses. <g>
Paul
* Which happen to be based on another original work (the show) which happens to be based on copyrighted characters. This is okay in this case because we have the tacit approval of the copyright owners. That is, the fandom's been fairly prominent for more than a few years (they've obviously been aware that we're around and writing stories), and in that time, they've never told us to stop.
