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When I started at Fantagraphics, I spearheaded a project to reorganize the library and archival material.[1] Managing a magazine, comics and graphic-novel library involves a lot of new challenges — how to best organize 10,000 books that would normally all reside in 741.59 in the Dewey Decimal system, shelving (European albums have different dimensions, based on the metric system), etc., etc. — that, in general, libraries have had to seriously start tackling, since graphic novels are now a fairly important addition to most public libraries, at least, and an ever-growing area of academic study.[2]
In fact, the recent news story about the firing of Sharon Cook and Beth Boisvert, two Kentucky library workers who abused their employee privileges to keep Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier out of circulation, because they believed that it didn't belong in the library (they summed up their position on the book thusly: as an example of material "[…] readily available on [the library's] shelves, that is improper for children to view")[3], is a case study in how the way that people manage and treat graphic novels behind-the-scenes really, really matters.
I couldn't help but think of Cook and Boisvert while reading 2009's
Graphic Novels: Beyond the Basics (subtitled
Insights and Issues for Libraries), edited by Martha Cornog and Timothy Pepper, which I read hoping to learn more than I already know about comics librarianship.[4] I was especially seeking more information about categorization, and maybe some cool library-insider statistics.[5] While Cornog and Pepper's book is a good primer, with solid scholarship, on what kind of graphic novels are out there, it's really a resource for the beleaguered public, not private, librarian who has to answer not only to patrons, [6] but has to function in a government bureaucracy (unless they work for a school, and then they have to function in a bureaucracy inside a bureaucracy).
In fact, from an outsider perspective,
Graphic Novels: Beyond the Basics is a fascinating snapshot of the schizophrenia inherent in public librarianship in the first decade of the 21st century: on one hand, people who work in libraries tend to passionately defend their ideologies and are willing to fight (or work) the system because of it, whether they're "protecting the children" or protesting the Patriot Act. Not only that, they are able to create a collection that can be more independent of marketplace concerns than bookstores, lending patrons books they would never be able to afford otherwise and buying and stocking books that would be far too old, unpopular, etc., for a bookstore to carry. On the other hand, taxpayers via the government put food in their mouths and a roof over their head (and, given the economy's current widespread budget shortfalls, sometimes not even that).[7]
The tensions that this situation can bring about are evident in this passage in Francisca Goldsmith's essay "A Place in the Library" in
Graphic Novels. She's discussing how to prevent patrons from vandalizing materials — a major problem that goes back probably farther than the printing press — and her for-instance is an imaginary middle-school girl who cuts an image out of a manga library book and puts it on her binder. Goldsmith suggests heavily monitoring the collection to catch culprits — and any intern, cartoonist, critic or Fanta employee who's ever heard my crime-and-punishment speech when he or she has borrowed a book from the Fanta library knows I'm right there with her — but she goes a bit further. She writes,
This of course is also theft, but beyond mutilation of the library material, the perpetrator is also misusing copyright-protected material by placing it outside its context and treating it as something else — binder cover rather than a page in a narrative. Especially among middle school children, whose moral reasoning is still developing, such mutilations may not be hidden from library staff because perpetrators are not clearly aware of their crime being perceived as such. Question the evidence directly in cases where mutilation is a fact and when collection users are sporting its outcome. (156)
(In all fairness, I can imagine it would be pretty infuriating when people wreck library books and then flaunt it, and she also points out that the library needs to look out for censors hurting books too. But, judging from her word choices, that copyright-infringing hypothetical middle-school girl had better watch out.)
In fact, one thing I took away from reading the news story about Cook and Boisvert and
Graphic Novels is just how adept library workers are at working the system. For example, in
Graphic Novels, one clever solution for dealing with complaints is to add material that the patron would prefer instead of removing the offending material, i.e., buy some Christian graphic novels.
But when I read about everything that Cook and Boisvert did to make sure that the
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier wouldn't circulate — removing a patron's hold, checking the patron's records to find out exactly who had it on hold, keeping it out overdue — I was frankly freaked out. And while reading
Graphic Novels: Beyond the Basics, I got a strong impression (many of
Graphic Novel's contributors parenthetically mention librarians who are not on board with comics) that much of its purpose is to educate and diffuse the Cooks and Boisverts of the world.
Next Week: (Gold) Standards Part Two: Comparing and Contrasting
Graphic Novels: Beyond The Basics and
Comics LibrarianshipNotes:
[1] Haven't recounted lately but judging by shelving space alone, Fanta's collection has at the very least doubled in size in the last five years.
[2] Which would have been impossible if the following people, who deserve much thanks and appreciation, hadn't volunteered their brain power, time and effort: Sean Connor rebuilt the shelves, and at-the-time University of Washington information-studies students Ken Price, Carmine Rau and Richard Visick developed the shelving categories we use. Since then a small army of (hardcore) interns and I have been working hard to keep it going, and at least one intern, Chrissy Spallone, has gone on to become formally educated in library studies.
[3] This information came from Amy Wilson's story for the
Lexington Herald-Leader, linked to by
The Beat, located at
http://www.kentucky.com/latest_news/story/1011029.html[4] Cornog, Martha, & Pepper, Timothy, eds.
Graphic Novels: Beyond the Basics. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, LLC, 2009.
[5] There are a few cool statistics — and it's incredibly useful to see what books were challenged by patrons, and why, and if they were removed from the collection or not — but a lot of it is the same stuff you can find on ICv2 regarding the size and shape of the market, or what I found out researching my gender-and-reading articles.
[6] So, library users are "patrons" in the fullest sense of the word.
[7] This is probably exacerbated by the fact that libraries are going through something of an identity crisis, transforming from a place that keeps books to more of a community information center. (I wrote a little bit about it here
http://www.comixology.com/articles/124/Invisible-Libraries.)This is evident in
Graphic Novels, too: most chapters involve suggestions for community outreach activities, like comics-drawing workshops, etc.
Image credits:
Panel from Bookhunter by Jason Shiga [©2007 Jason Shiga]
Panel from The War at Ellsmere [©2008 Faith Erin Hicks]
Panel from "Green Tea" in Kevin Huizenga's Curses [©2006 Kevin Huizenga]
Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2010
