OK, this is my first year here, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to gather together a list of all of the eligible stories for this next Kerth Awards. But I'm a bit overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of stories out there. So a bit of advice would be helpful.

As I understand it, any story submitted to the Lois and Clark Fanfic Archive in the calendar year of 2003 is eligible. Now, when I go to the archive home page and do a search by post date, that gives me a list through August. No problem. However, how do I know which stories posted in Jan are ineligible because they were nomintated last year?

And to get a list of stories Sept. through now, should I just use the TOC board?

And what about other boards? Should I be also counting stories posted at Zoomway?

Any advice would be great. I'd like to do some major reading over the holidays and start whittling away at my scroll of great stories <g>.

Thanks!
Lynn

Hi Lynn,

If you can manage to wait until a couple of weeks before nominations open to finalise your list (which will be in February some time), there will be an eligibles list available on Erin's Kerth website. I don't know how we'd manage without that list!

Anyway, eligibility. Obviously, everything uploaded to the Archive during the calendar year in question - although where this gets complicated is, as you say, in the case of a small number of stories uploaded in January which were eligible the previous year. How do you know which these were? I think Erin might still have last year's eligibility list up, though I couldn't swear to it. And she usually shows any 'added' stories at the top of the list. Of course, once this year's list comes out, you'll be able to see whether stories from January last year are on it.

You know, of course, that to get beyond August in the 'uploaded by date' section on the Archive you go to What's New? Currently, there are stories there from September onwards.

As for stories not on the Archive by the end of the year, whether they are eligible or not is up to the author. If they have been posted somewhere in full (these boards, the other boards, Annesplace, a personal website etc) by the end of December, the author may send the Kerth Committee the URL of the story with a request that it be included. The K-Comm will be able to confirm this, but it's my vague impression that there's never more than around a dozen of these 'extra' stories.

So if you've read a story posted here, say, in December, by all means make a note of it, but you won't know if it's eligible until the list comes out - and even when it comes out first it will change as authors are reminded to send in their requests to make stories eligible.

But you do get quite a bit of time to make up your mind, Lynn. The Kerth quizzes will start some time in January - that's one way of getting people thinking about Kerths. The nominations list will go up some time in February, I think (I know that the Kerth committee is currently working on putting together their dates for this year), and then when nominations open you have two weeks to get yours in.

Hope you enjoy taking part in the Kerths, Lynn! They're a lot of fun!


Wendy