Rough Draft of Pete's Spoken Presentation

OK, hello everyone, my interest in using deviantART focused mainly on the Literature aspect of the site. The main focus of deviantART, in fact, is on the visual arts component, but I felt there were a lot of rich opportunities for interaction in the area that concentrates on the written word.
Here are a few screen shots from this section of deviantART. Each of the boxes, with text, represents a written work, and as I flip through these screen shots, you can see that there are quite a few categories to which writers can assign their work.
Most of this writing, as I experienced it, seemed to be done by young people. It was highly emotional and romanticized; it was also sweet and innocent in spite of a put-on air of world-weary cynicism. I remember writing stuff like this in high school...
But the important thing is that there is a lot of interest and a lot of passion around this site, and people are just into doing this writing and sharing it with others. That high interest seems like a great jumping-off point for looking at ways that libraries can tap into the young writers' passions, and to interact with users of the site. It's also a way to introduce interested library patrons to what deviantART might offer to them.
I think the site has quite a lot of potential for bringing library users together with writers. So, the question is how to use the deviantART site to build interest in writing among library patrons--how do we get one group to interact with the other?
Some ideas might include:
1. Establishing a physical space in the library that would focus on the potential of deviantART. A small learning center-type area with some computers, and lots of
examples of the kinds of (hopefully inspiring) things one might find on the site.
2. Using the Tutorials section of dA to display some helpful video or other instructional material, such as ideas for creative or other writing, "tell me about yourself" type video
introductions, writers discussing their creative processes, etc.
3. Developing collaborative projects between Library user and dA users. There is a large
collection of film, video and animation work on the site. It's easy to imagine collabor-
ative work between writers and filmmakers who would be brought together by dA.
Also, collective writing exercises, zines, literary/poetry anthologies, workshops led
by more experienced writers, mentoring programs....these all seem like potentially
rich areas to explore.
4.Using the Journals feature of dA to keep people aware of writing-related events taking
place at SFPL.

Haven't quite put the conclusion part of this together. I wonder if we want to make it a collaborative effort?

Pete