Maximizing the Impact of Comics in Your Library by Jack Phoenix

Author:Jack Phoenix
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO

In 2008, one of librarianship’s foremost experts on comics in libraries, Robert Weiner, published an article and an essay in his book, Graphic Novels and Comics in Libraries and Archives, about his efforts and successes in creating an in-house classification system for the comics in his library’s collection. One of the first to be published about this topic, Weiner created a unique system of organizing comics, which was a tremendous success for improving circulation and being user friendly (Weiner 2008, 2010), and the next section will provide details of how that went about. Laurel references this in-house classification system in her essay in the same book (Tarulli 2010). She assesses and critiques the ways that libraries catalog comics and her observations reinforce many of the problems that Weiner sought to address in his in-house classification system. She discusses the gap that exists between front-line and technical staff at the library, highlighting why you’ll need to get lots of staff buy-in before you can create your own classification system and reorganize your comics collection. But you’ll likely find that, as long as you can make a strong case for it, most library staff members will care deeply about making items in your collections as browser-friendly as possible (Tarulli 2010).

CPL, “The People’s University,” uses LCC in its stacks, and Christina Pyles discussed quite a few suggestions on how to improve access to the comics (2012). She explained that studies have shown that circulation statistics go up when comics are added to a collection, a message to any library out there that may still be a hold out. She then echoed what Weiner had said and the reasonings he used for his in-house classification; cataloging, classification, and shelving are important for access and should be unorthodox in order to improve access to comics. Whether your library is Dewey or LCC, comics and comic readers are better served by a dedicated classification system.

In her article, Pyles tells us of CPL’s main branch, which, at the time the article was written, had their comics scattered throughout three genre collections—popular library, literature, and young adult—making these items difficult for patrons to find by browsing or specifically searching. The “lack of library classification for graphic novels” is a problem (Pyles 2012), and proclaims that librarians who shelve the items by LCC or DDC call numbers are doing their users a disservice.

Because the graphic novels are not sorted by author, publisher, character, or in any way that is appealing to the user or makes them easy to find. The inability to classify comics and graphic novels in a logical and visible way affects the way that users access this information … Suggested methods of improvement include the development of a formal and in-depth classification system, the maintenance of an online comic database … Libraries have to come up with a universal and encompassing classification system. (Pyles 2012)

This suggestion is one that mirrors the actions that Weiner took at his library by creating the specified indexes for the “graphic

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